Ties that Bind
by Vance.G
Summary: 3 orphans from the Konoha Orphanage was sent with a team of shinobi on a suicide mission Now 13 yrs later, they return home triumphant, only to find it in ruins. The village is vulnerable & only what they have can save their new home, but at what cost? OC
1. Prologue

Prologue.

NARUTO

I should never have left the village. Looking at Sasuke's unmoving body on the white hospital bed, I felt sick. It's been a month since my return from Jiraiya's training, and there hasn't been any improvement in his condition. After suffering multiple cuts to his torso, he had almost died of severe hemorrhaging. Thankfully, Tsunade-obasan was able to do a blood transfusion in time to keep his life, but he had gone under a coma because of the interval when blood had failed to reach his brain. Shizune says that they can't tell when he will wake up, if he does manage to wake from the coma.

"Damn you Sasuke! Weren't you always talking big about how good you've become? How are you going to kill that twisted snake bastard or exact your revenge when you're out like a freaking sleeping beauty in here?! Wake the hell up and get off your ass!"

The thought of his still body lying there in the bed forever, brought a crushing feeling to my heart. He was my rival, my goal, my brother and he might never wake to smirk his annoyingly sarcastic smile, or brag about how he could kick my ass ten different ways, ever again.

Two years after I left the village with Jiraiya to learn how to control the Kyuubi's chakra, Orochimaru had planned and executed a raid in Konaha, with an attack force of six thousand strong Sound shinobi and some undead zombies. They had planned to strike Konoha when it in the middle of a celebration for the newly promoted Chunnins who had completed the Chunnin exams successfully, their goal was the extraction of Sasuke from Konoha, they struck at our most vulnerable time. Sasuke remains here, but it was at the cost of sixty-eight shinobi and ANBU. Another fifteen people were grievously hurt , and out of these fifteen, eight would never be able to be a shinobi ever again. Ino was one of them, her legs were crushed under a section of a destroy sentry wall and they had to amputate them to remove her from the scene. Twenty-two civilians had lost their lives in the struggle to protect their village. Because of that he bore the brunt of the whole villages' hate, they blamed him for the deaths of their beloved family. They even tried to kill him while lay defenseless on the hospital beds, so far there were eight assassination attempts on his life. As a result, Tsnunade-obasan had to restrict the people who were allowed to enter his ward.

This isn't the first time the villagers had expressed contempt against one person without a rationale. They were treating him like they did me before I had proven myself. While Tsunade fought to save Sasuke's life, they had the gall to petition the Hokage to euthanize him. Luckily the council had supported Tsunade in denying their request. Inretaliation, riots between the villagers and the shinobi families had broken out in the streets of Konoha and the ANBU had to pull off a mass genjutsu to put all the ordinary villagers to sleep.

We were all in grieving, for one person or another. A friend, a comrade, family or a lover. At times like this isn't it more important than ever to bond together, to ease the pain of your loved ones? Somehow the villagers couldn't seem to understand that, instead they acted like mindless animals. Being frightened and angry, they turned to the first person they could think of to blame for their hardship and losses. This was not unlike how they reacted to me after the siege against kyuubi sixteen years ago.

A soft hand rested on my shoulder and I looked up to it's owner. It was Sakura. Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen, her cheek stained with tears. She looked down at me and gave me a watery smile. Telling me that she understood my pain.

I stood up to give the seat next to the sick bed to her. She needed to be with him.

"Don't worry Sakura," my throat was dry and hoarse like I hadn't used it for years "he'll wake up soon, he's such a workaholic he can't stand slacking off for too long."

Sakura's voice came out equally parched. "Yes, Sasuke will definitely wake up, Naruto. We shouldn't worry too much of Sasuke will make fun of us."

"Yeah, he will definitely come back to us. Then my family will finally be complete again."


	2. Mission Impossible

DISCLAIMER

The Naruto world doesn't belong to me and, and neither do most of the characters. But Asami, Nowaki and Ichirou are my original characters.

* * *

Chapter 1

ASAMI

Tonight, something is going to happen. Something life changing. The end of this hellish life is near, whether it ends in failure or otherwise. I'm not usually such a pessimist, I like to think that anything can be done with enough time to prepare. I've been in many tight spots before, but none of them even come close to making me feel this level of mortality right now. For shinobi, there are 6 levels of difficulty for the missions you are chosen to complete for your hidden village there is C class, B class, A class, S class and SS class. With C class being the easiest to complete and SS class the most difficult. My mission is beyond this ranking system. You can say it outclasses all of them. While the S in SS class stands for 'super', the S in my SS* class stands for shadow-suicide. It means that shinobi sent for these missions aren't expected to survive them, much less complete the mission.

And it's been proven to be true by the other two teams sent before us. Now only two shinobi from my team are with me to complete the mission. And we will not go down without a fight.

From my perch in one of the trees on the perimeter, I could make out eight of the thirty strong samurai sentry guards. They blocked the main entrance to the facility we needed to raid.

"Come in, Mi-chan." Ichirou's quiet voice sounded through the ear piece.

I rolled my eyes at the nickname Ichirou uses on me when we're in battle mode.I pressed the side of my throat where the small flat voice transmitting chip rested. An elastic collar held the little device in place. And whispered back."Roger Chi-chan, I am in position."

"I hear you Mi-chan. Come in Ma-kun, are you in position?"

"Hey why am I -kun when you're both -chan ?" Nowaki's light-hearted-ness is never able to read the situation and excuse itself at the appropriate occasions.

"That's because you're so uncute." Ichirou retorted back. He likes to rub Nowaki the wrong way."Are you in position Gaki-chan?"

"Gaki?! who're you to call me gaki? you're two months younger than me, ya know ."

I rolled my eyes at their childish antics at such a crucial time. " Can you both please shut up? We don't want to alert the guards."

"Sorry Mi-chan." They both chimed softly in unison.

I groaned. "Ma-chan are you in position?"

"Hmm... If it's Mi-chan, it would sound cooler if you call me Ma-kun"

I could feel a vein twitching on my temples. "If you continue talking crap, I'm going to cut off all your fingers and shove them down your throat."

"Mi-chan, as much as I like the imagery of that scenario, the gaki still needs his fingers to disarm the containment seals. We could do that as a debut performance when we reach konohagakure, if you want it of course." He almost sounded hopeful.

"Okay, okay. I get the message, I'm in position Mi-chan."

"How many on your side, Chi-chan?"

"Four"

"Ma-kun?"

"Four"

"Okay, there's four on my side too. That's all of them accounted for. So since we have time, let's go over the plan alright?"

"What?! Not again, we've gone over it a hundred times, I can memorize it word for word. Gimme a break." It was Nowaki again.

"Says the person who breaks team the moment you get the opportunity to lop someone's head off."

"…" At least I got him to shut up. Really, I love the guy but sometimes I could enjoy clobbering him to death.

"There are 8 seals spots along the perimeter. In thirteen minutes, The Sphere is going to flicker, we have only that split second to get them. And we're gonna have to penetrate the spots, for at least three inches. No mistakes. If any of us miss, we'll have to wait anoth-"

"We won't miss." This time it was Ichirou.

"I don't appreciate the interruption Chi-chan." When will they ever learn to shut up when the time calls for it? " Yes we won't miss. But IF we miss, we'll have to wait another year. Which we might not survive since we'd kill each other out of boredom first. So i need to stress how important this is guys. "

They grunted in reply, which I took it that they'd received the point. " We'll know that The Sphere is down when the guards start panicking, otherwise keep your position. While they're in panic, we have to cross the ten km, bring the stakes along with you, we don't want to make it too obvious that they are under attack. Ichirou find that old geezer who made the seal, then knock him out and hid him somewhere make sure he won't recover from it for about twenty minutes, then come round to the entrance to back me up. Nowaki, get the head medical-nin and do the same, make sure both of you do it unseen. I'll find the four jewels and get them out within the time limit. Then we can trash the whole damn place up. No one leaves the place but the three of us and the two hostages. Clear?"

"Yeah baby, we'll get all the damned bastards." Nowaki has a way with words.

"Mi-chan, I know we've talked about it, but do we really have to kill them all? I mean, once we get the hostages and the stones, we don't really have to kill them. We could just vanish." Ichirou is the most empathetic one out of us three. It's not that we're heartless, we just do whatever it takes to complete a mission. We kill when we need to, but if not, we'll let them off. Simple as that. Ichirou is a little different. He's got this gentleman's code (he calls it) to follow. He doesn't use violence unless to preserve life. He doesn't fight women and children, and he protects anything or anyone too weak to fight on their own, even at the cost of his life. Oh and he'll kill anyone who breaks his Gentlemen's code after they take the vow.

"What are you talking about now Ichirou, of course we've gotta send them all to hell." Nowaki finds his Gentlemen's code rather ridiculous, he kills whoever wants to kill him or anyone whom he cherishes, to hell if you're female or underage. And he believes that weak people deserve to die.

In my opinion, Ichirou's Gentleman code was just a fancy way of saying that he's a chauvinist pig, a sucker for girls and that he's got an obsession to protect the weak. I accepted it as their own way of doing things, so I let them be. Just that at moments like these, Ichirou's sense of morality can hinder the mission, which I cannot condone. "Chi-chan, we've been through this and throughout this. No, we cannot leave them alive no one should know that this facility even existed. If any of these people survive and it reaches the ears of other political figures, it will throw the ninja villages into war again, which will lead to deaths. A lot of deaths. I think this is in line with your Gentlemen's Code? The prevention of needless deaths?"

"I know, but the threat is far in the future and it might not blow up to cause such heavy casualties."

Usually I would agree with Ichirou. But it meant so much to more to me than just following protocol, we had to do this right for us and for our team members who died for us. We had to do it in their place."No. No more arguments, I've made myself clear. Every person in there will die, there will be no exceptions.""Please, Ichirou don't fail me now, don't fail them now. Not when we can be done with this once and for all. I want to go home. Our home. We've fought so long to earn our place there. Don't fail me now."

There was silence for awhile, even Nowaki was quiet for a while. We all understood what I implied. Their deaths had really affected all of us, we had almost decided to abandon the mission, along with our lives. However, we chose to see it through to the end for their sake. Such that their deaths would not be in vain. Ichirou has always been the more reliable one when it came to following orders than Nowaki, who did things recklessly, but when it comes to breaking his principles, he came be even more difficult to deal with than Nowaki. It was hard on I knew his answer before I heard it. "Ok Asami, but this is the last time we'll pull a mass murder like this ever." I could hear him pleading for some confirmation from me, but I did no such thing.

I knew how it tore him up inside to kill people, how it hurt him to see people die, how much more it pains him to see me and Nowaki drenched in the blood of others. My heart ached to know his suffering, I wanted to soothe it, to say we will never have our hands stained with death ever again, to hold him and make the nightmares that would inevitably come to him vanish. But I couldn't. Who knows what more we have to do in the future when we return under the command of a Hokage who could send three year old toddlers together with shinobis on a suicide mission to insure its success. So I told the truth.

"I can't say that for sure for us all, but I'm damned well sure that I won't let anyone else force you to do such a thing again in the future, Ichirou. I promise. Never again." I knew it wasn't the answer he wanted. Not even close. If Nowaki or myself was involved in a battle he would place himself at our side no matter the cause. We all knew that, but I would keep him out of it next time.

"Err.. Mi-chan, not to spoil the mood but this really ain't the time for us to go all warm and fuzzy on each other, right? I wanna go home too Mi-chan, with you and even Chi-teme. Soon. We'll get this over and done with Chi-chan, then we can all forget about this and go home, maybe even date some hot babes, get married and have kids or something. You'll start balding and grow fat being a doting old granddad, smiling like a fool without any teeth, then me and Mi-chan can laugh at cha."

I smiled at the image. Trust Nowaki to always be able to lighten up the mood.

"I don't think you'll have the chance to laugh at me Ma-chan, you'll probably go senile and forget how to go to the bathroom, then me and Mi-chan'll laugh ourselves hoarse from seeing you shit your pants all day."

Hearing Ichirou's answering jest made my feel relieved and I knew he felt better too. The three of us chuckled softly as the soft breeze rustled the leaves around us as a reminder of our circumstance. I looked at the watch, six more minutes.

* * *

ICHIROU

I regretted bringing up the subject to Asami again at such a crucial hour. She doesn't need to worry about me during the mission. But the words had flowed out of my mouth before I could stop myself. In this mission human lives are going to be sacrificed. Not that most of them don't deserve to die. But a life is a life no matter how sick that person's life can be. I don't object to razing the place and all evidence of the atrocities that happen in there to the ground. What they do in there is disgusting.

The three of us have been preparing for this endgame mission for months. Each taking turns to watch and observe the activity of the people going in and out of the facility. We had to capture a few of the assistants to bribe, coax and coerce information out of them. We had learnt a lot. Much more than we did in the years searching for the location of this facility.

At first, we'd only known that we were searching for four jewels shaped like an egg but at about one third it's size, we were told by our party's members that they held great power what would throw the world into chaos if taken into the hands of the wrong people. Those members are dead now. We'd been ambushed six years ago and they died protecting the three of us. The five of them were like our parents. They tried to make up to us for the lack of family, shelter and memories of Konoha by telling us stories about the Konoha from their memories.

My memories of Konoha were vague, to say the least. I could roughly recall some things when Minasuke described the places in Konoha. Out of the four adult shinobis, he was the best story teller. But Asami and Nowaki don't remember anything of their earlier days back in Konoha. Between Kaoru, Sano, Minami and Minasuke, they told such beguiling stories, about adventures they experienced, the missions they undertook, the friends they made and the families they had. Through them, the three of us had learnt to call Konoha 'Home' though we remembered nothing of that place. We envied them, having memories of a home that we could only dream about.

I broke off from the reminiscing when I noticed that that there were only three guards on the grounds before me. I pressed the side of my throat to activate the transmitter.

"Mi-chan, one guard in my area is missing, is he in your area?"

"No need for panic, he's here, there's five in my area now."

That was careless of me. I need to focus on the mission now.

"How long more Mi-chan?"

"Three minutes. Get ready."

I peered around again, to see the seals, four of them. but i only needed to take care of three. Mi-chan'll take the last one, and two more on her side.

The facility's first defense is a three tier system. Detect, immobilize and alarm, in that order. It is created with the combination of two containment seals and an alarm device, we call it the Dome. It works like this, the detection seal is like a sieve, shaped as a sphere and it surrounds the whole research facility with a two kilometer radius, including underground. It senses the chakra signature of whoever who walks through it, and if it is one that it recognizes, the person would walk in unharmed, if the signature is foreign, then that is when the immobilization kicks in. The sucker who tries to get through the invisible dome will receive a high voltage electric shock and their heart will stop, and they will be in the condition they state they call suspended animation, or clinical death.

The immobilization seal is connected to the alarm device by a chakra string. So when there is a surge of chakra activated, some of it will charge through the string and activate the alarm which will sound throughout the facility, and the guards are mobilized to detain, revive then torture the poor bastard for information.

In the months we'd been observing the facility, we've tested how fast they react to an intruder and were rather happily surprised to see that they were complacent- slow to check on the disturbance. It would make our infiltration easier.

The reason for their slow reaction links to the reason we are waiting now. The seals for the detection and immobilization function were getting old. Having been in use for about eighty years had caused the seals to be a little unreliable; they flicker off occasionally. At first we though it to be random, but after Asami realized the time intervals in which the flux happens, we started putting together a timeline for the mission. Timing is crucial to disarm the seals completely. The duration of the flux in the seals is exactly two seconds. Too little time to rush in unless we were standing directly infront of it, which would expose us to the sentry guards.

The seals were located in the North, South, East and West of the facility who in each direction. There is only three of us, so we settled for a triangle formation with Asami at the South point, Nowaki at the North-west and me at the North-east. Asami and me were supposed to take care of three seal each and Nowaki would take out two. Of course, it would have been better if there were four of us to complete this mission, but beggars can't be choosers.

The guards are going to be the real hurdle here. They weren't an ordinary squadron of guards or shinobi. They were samurai.

These guys are deadly with a capital D. Their kenjutsu technique is unrivaled in the world, and few who go up against them live to tell the tale. We've encountered them twice so far, each time with only the three of us against one swordsman, it wasn't an easy win. Nowaki still has the scar from last year to show for the last fight. Not only do they have skills with a sword, the samurai have also refined their five senses beyond that of normal human efficiency. When blinded the samurai can sense the movement and use their sense of hearing to track their opponent. We once witnesses a samurai dance around a jounin shinobi, making innumerable small nicks and cuts and the shinobi was unable to land a single hit, then with a flick of a wrist, he beheaded him. They are also the only fighting clan in the world that the shinobi have not, or more correctly, cannot eliminate.

In fact the only advantage that shinobi have above them is that we use chakra, while they cannot. Unfortunately, the samurai have also created some means to take that advantage away from us. The samurai created armor that can deflect any attack fueled by chakra. Any ninjutsu just slides off them like how water slides off rock. A well-made genjutsu could have some use on them, but the three of us are untalented when it comes to genjutsu so we came up with another plan.

"This is it! Counting down, 7.. 6.. 5.. " This is the moment. I grasped the stakes, and gripped them lightly in my palm. Eyes on the target. I noted the excitement in Asami's tone

"3.. 2.. 1!"

Two seconds, and eight decisive strikes later, chaos broke out. It's show time.

* * *

Authors note:

I think I'll put up a prologue some time but I'll finish the first few chapters I'm working on first. This is my first fan-fiction I have ever written so please be gentle. Review and tell me where I'm lacking. Hope you enjoyed the story and look forward to the next installment.


	3. I am Ninja!

DISCLAIMER

The shinobi world doesn't belong to me but the three, Asami, Nowaki and Ichirou, are my original characters.

* * *

Chapter 2

NOWAKI

Finally, the signal came from Asami to strike. I was convinced that that moment was never going to come. As I felt the stakes leave my hand, I knew that they would strike true. Ichirou might be a real pain in the ass but he was reliable. Asami, being Asami would commit harakiri before she misses any target.

Sure enough, the bastards started to shout and run around like ants in a frying pan. The time to give some pain to them is here, I can't wait. But first there's Asami's orders. I have to find the old geezer who made the security seals. I tested my weight on the branch and hopped off. It feels good to stretch my muscles again after a half hour sitting my ass on a tree branch, I was afraid it would be permanently grafted to my butt. Landing soundlessly within the boundary, I snatched up the silver stakes from the ground, they went it deep. They were scalding hot, and they'd probably melt my skin if not for the protective gloves I have on. The seal must have held a lot of juice for it to become that hot. These stakes are with a special metal that can absorb chakra. Not unlike the kind that the samurai use to make their armor. In fact the metal we got were taken off the corpses of the two samurai we had to kill before this mission. We had to melt their armor to make the stakes.

" Guys remember your orders. Get yourselves to the geezer and the professor in five and keep them somewhere from being discovered. Then, continue to the next phase. Good hunting, Ma-kun, Chi-chan." Trust Asami to be a nag. Sometimes I think she gets a kick out of repeating herself.

"Roger Mi-chan, good hunting Ma-kun." The suck-up, he always seems to react instantaneously to Asami. I suspect he's probably has something going for Asami.

"Yeah thanks, good luck too, then we can all go out and have some sake and takoyaki."

I could practically see them rolling their eyes at me. I pushed the thought aside when I saw the four samurai in my line of sight. I would really like to take them out now, but Asami doesn't want to alarm them before we get the stones. So I suppressed my killing urge and did the hand seals. The air around me felt cooler as the shadow around me rose to blanket me, this is the Kage gaitou no jutsu, this cloaking jutsu only works in the dark. As I move, the shadowy surroundings acts like a canopy, it prevents anyone from seeing the user. Not only that, I absorbs any sound I make and shields me from attack, but it can only block one attack. It's the ultimate camouflage technique for night infiltration. Slipping by the guards would be cake.

I couldn't help tripping one of the guards just to see the look on his face, and held back kicking his face on the ground when it was within reach. Asami would be proud of my restraint. I'll whip the bastards later.

The facility finally came into sight. It was a little bigger than I expected, its once white walls now covered with vegetation and large cracks, the proof of the many years of operation. It's a nest of human scum that we are going to wipe out.

When we'd first learnt of the experiments they were conducting, I'd wanted to take a go at them then and there but Ichirou and Asami overruled me. Apparently those stones we're after have something in them. Ichirou calls them 'sentient entities' , I call them demons. The evil scientists somehow force those demons into their test subject and watch to see how they are affected. From what we got from those yellow bellied informants, some of the test subjects experience their bodies breaking down, their organs failing one by one. Others start having multiple different diseases attacking their organs simultaneously. Those who don't go through physical disintegration experience it psychologically gradually - they lose their minds. First they start having nightmares, then they experience hallucinations, sudden outbursts of violence, eventually their outbursts stop and they retreat back into their consciousness, refusing to interact with the outside world, not eating or drinking and they waste away.

The memory of that interrogation still sends a chill down my spine. When the lab guy we caught described the deaths of the test subjects, he had shown no remorse, no pity, not a hint of sadness. Instead his eyes glinted with manic energy, 'All that power' he said, 'imagine it harnessed by Men, he could change the world'. Towards the end, he begged for mercy, he tried to justify their actions, 'necessary sacrifices for the greater good' was the last thing he said. And his screams for mercy will forever ring through my mind.

-FLASHBACK-

_" Tell us about the experiments going on in the facility." Asami's voice was calm and quiet but her eyes were blazing. She'd been repeating the same question for about an hour now._

_The poor guy's face was already starting to swell up like a balloon, blood leaking out of what's left of his nose, and his cut lips. A few fingers were also missing from his hand. He'd been quite persistent to keep his mouth shut so Asami decided to give him a taste of our special care to convince him otherwise._

_"O-ok.. I-I'll tell you! P-p-please stop! I'll t-tell you!" The pungent stench of the air around us was stinging my nose._

_"Ha! Look at him! He's wetting himself like a yellow bellied one year old! Ha ha ha!" Asami was looking at the guy like he was dirt. Ichirou's face was like thunderclouds his eyes had gone all cold. "He's probably shitting himself too! About time you start talking ya' bastard, then ya could've kept your fingers." I figured since Asami was saying so little, and Ichirou was silent, I had to keep up a conversation. But Asami rewarded me by turning her eyes on me instead. I closed my mouth._

_"B-but Y-you got to s-swear, s-s-swear on your h-honor y-you'll l-let me go. D-don't kill me." The little shit still had the nerve to make a deal in his situation. _

_"Alright. I swear on my honor that I will not take your life. After you've answered all my questions sufficiently. And you'd better be telling the truth." Honor meant a lot of us so such oaths are absolute, and we don't break them even if our lives were at stake._

_"Yes! Y-yes! I'll tell the truth!" _

_Asami stared at him coldly for a moment longer then asked Ichirou to heal some of his injuries. She didn't want him bleeding to death while she questioned him._

_"Tell me about the jewels, what are they? Why do they hold so much power?"_

_"T-the jewels-" His voice was less shaky after the healing and it was easier to understand what he was saying. " yes, they contain great power. There are creatures in them, powerful enough to rival any of the bijuu." I was surprised to hear him say that. The bijuu are the most powerful forces the world had ever seen. There is nothing that can compare to them in pure destructive power. " We have tried to communicate to them, they appear to be understand us, however they refuse to acknowledge our efforts."_

_"They are sentient beings? They live in the jewels?"_

_"Yes it appears so. However they seem to be able to enter a human container like the bijuu."_

_"WHAT?!" This time it was Ichirou talking, it's the first thing he's said so far in the interrogation. "They can enter a human container? Then why are there no breakouts if these demi-gods are fueling some hosts?!"_

_The little guy seemed shocked by Ichirou's outburst._

_"Y-yes. But unlike the bijuu we can't trap and seal them in just any human. T-they only devastate the human's body w-without any evident c-cost to themselves. When the host we p-put them in dies, they simply return to the orbs. We tried to destroy the orbs immediately after sealing them in a human host, but the stones remain without a scratch despite our greatest efforts." His eyes were clouded as he said this, like he'd forgotten where he was. "But we've given them so many choices. When they refused to accept the inmates we brought them, we started bringing in more test subjects, orphans we picked off the streets, healthy adults and children. Shinobi, of all ages, Males, females. We even used a few of the samurai guards and some of our own researchers from the facility. But they have refused all of them, not only that, they have utterly destroyed the test subjects and they still refuse to talk to us. What more do they want?! What more do they want before they'll tell us?! If they were to give some hint, some sort of request-"_

_He seemed to be really lost in his thoughts so I decided to bring him back to earth. I placed my foot over the ankle joint and pressed my weight downwards. A satisfying wet crunch answered my effort. Sure enough, he started writhing on the ground clutching his foot, whimpering and shaking like a drowning puppy._

_" Hey, finally back to earth? Remember us? The little sadistic lab nerd answers questions or die? Getting off topic were we? Hmm?" Asami gave me a mild look of disapproval but since she did nothing further, it wasn't the foot-crunch that she upset her. So I stopped gloating. I took a glance at Ichirou, he looked a bit sick._

_"You… you sick bastards. Women and children? How many have died for your sick experiments?!"_

_The guy was still rolling around. I was tempted to crush the other ankle. But Asami stopped me mid-stomp. Instead, Ichirou stepped forward to grab the front of the pathetic geek's shirt and shook him. What's left of his teeth were getting knocked out as Ichirou delivered a couple of slaps to his face. The sharp sound from the blows rang out through the forest. It was kinda sad seeing the lousy attempts he made to block his face, it was already purple and it was so swollen he couldn't open his eyes any wider then little slits that showed the that blood vessels in whites. _

_"How many damnnit?! How many?!" Ichirou always gets his feathers ruffled whenever it comes to those 'morality' issues, especially when women and children are involved. But this is the first time I've seen him so angry. Asami looked alarmed too. Asami isn't cold-hearted, nothing like that but she always has one hell of a poker face, she must have been as affected as I was by Ichirou's reaction. I don't care much for the inmates, but sacrificing their own comrades? Now that's just low. _

_"P-p-p-pleease s-stop… p-please…" his voice was weak, whining. But it seemed to only made Ichirou more incensed. Luckily for the dip-shit, Asami stopped Ichirou before he did anything further, we still had a lot we needed to know, we couldn't have get beaten to death now. She whispered something very low and Ichirou relaxed a little, he looked down at Asami and she nodded at him. I didn't catch what they said, but I knew roughly what had transversed between them._

_"How many?" Asami said this time, her demeanor had reverted back to a tranquil state._

_"E-eight-hundred a-a-and fifty-six." His answer came out in a wheeze._

_Asami's face turned sinister for a second, but smoothed back into an expressionless mask. Her eyes however, were still smoldering._

_"How are the beasts introduced into a hosts' bodies?" _

_"T-the legends that we c-collected from scrolls around t-the world d-d-described that all it takes is for an acceptable host to touch the orbs and the beasts would enter the human and stay in that person till the end of the host's life. However, since we hadn't found a suitable subject, we had to try other means-"_

_"Legends? What legends. Why did you make no mention of them before now?" Asami started to take a menacing step forward._

_"W-wait! I didn't mention them b-b-because I-i'd thought them irrelevant!" Asami stopped and settled down again._

_"What else do the legends say about these beasts?"_

_"T-they were said to r-represent the four directions a-a-and the four seasons of the Earth. Genbu, guardian of the North, bringer of winter. The oldest of them all. Suzaku, guardian of the South, usher of summer, she is the youngest. Seiryu, guardian of the East, he ends winter and brings spring to the earth. Byakko, the guardian of the west, corresponds to the fall season. Supposedly, each of the beasts also represents an element. However there are five elements, but only four beasts. It doesn't make sense."_

_Asami looked interested now. "Curious. Which elements do each of them represent?"_

_"Suzaku, the phoenix represents fire. Genbu, the giant tortoise with a snake for a tail represents earth. Byakko the white tiger, represents lightning. Lastly, Seiryu the azure dragon represents water. They also say that Seiryu is the beast who controls the weather."_

_"So only wind is unrepresented. For shinobi, wind users are rare. There might be some link…" Asami caught herself mid-thought. " You said that every test subject that you've used have died. How did they die?"_

_By the time we had milked the bastard of all the information we needed, I felt like tossing a cookie. I felt sick right to the core of myself. Those people died without knowing the reason, they died helpless, to satisfy the sadistic curiosity of that bastard and those like him. Their deaths were drawn out, suffering every second losing themselves little by little, all the while wishing they were dead, that they were never born. These people, no they don't qualify being people they were animals, savages, they get off seeing them suffering 'ingenious' he said. They'd looked forward to the methods the beasts used to destroy their container. Victims die by burns without any fire, drown in their saliva, choked on their tongue. When describing their cause of death, his eyes lit up, his body bobbing excitedly, like a kid during freaking christmas eve. He'd disgusted me. He'd disgusted us. Soon, disgust turned to anger and I was raring to kill him, I won't give him a quick death. No, his death will be slow and he'll be conscious for every last minute of his torture before I cut his heart out and rip it to shreds before his very eyes. _

_I would have if Asami hadn't stopped me. I'd wanted to ignore her and do it anyway, the damned ghoulish bastard deserved it. And the little shit knew._

_"W-w-wait! W-we h-had a deal. Y-You said you w-w-wouldn't k-kill me if-if I tell y-you what y-you w-w-want! S-stop him!"_

_Asami placed her hand on my chest her eyes were blue fire, restraining me. She shoved me back when I tried to take another step towards the slug. She looked me in the eyes and kept her gaze steady. She had a plan. So I sat down instead, fuming. The damned slug had the nerve to give a sigh of relief._

_"I swore on my honor that I will not take your life, that it true and so my hands are tied. However, my teammate here, made no such oath so our deal does not obligate him in anyway. Do what you will Ichirou, I'll watch." At that, Asami smiled. It wasn't the sunny smile she had when she's truly happy. It was more of a smirk. And it was obvious to all of us, what the fate of the worm would be. Said worm had started shaking already, crying tears of blood begging for mercy. _

_Ichirou pulled out a kunai and said quietly, "May God have mercy on your soul, for I will not!"_

-END FLASHBACK-

* * *

Author's note:

Kage gaitou no jutsu- Shadow cloak jutsu.

By the way, there are real legends about the shishin, the four guardian beasts I just tweaked it a little so that their elements can coincide with the shinobi elements.


	4. Shadow of the Warrior

DISCLAIMER

Shinobi world doesn't belong to me. Only the three OC characters, Asami, Nowaki and Ichirou belong to me.

* * *

Chapter 3.

ASAMI

My team had not disappointed me. The stakes had done their job. I dodged past the panicked security easily enough using Kage gaitou no jutsu. I'd taken six months to create this jutsu and it proves to be invaluable time and again. The entrance to the facility were supposed to be indestructible and I won't have the trance to test the theory. All it needed to open the door was a unique chakra signature, the one from the creator of the seals that we had just got past earlier. I took out the stakes and fed it into the hole large enough for someone to insert a fisted arm. Since the stakes had absorbed the chakra from the seals, the sensor would acknowledge the chakra to be coming from the same man.

Sure enough, the door swung open smoothly making not a sound. I slipped in closing the doors equally silently behind me. It was total darkness, I couldn't see a thing, a little chill went down my spin. I fumbled the chain around my neck and felt for the stone pendant hanging on it, then fed some chakra into it. The sudden burst of light coming from my pendant washed over me, piercing my eyes and blinded be for a few seconds, my initial fear forgotten. Next time I'll have to get a pair of sunglasses.

I peered around the narrow walkway, the walls were empty except for a couple of torch holsters mounted on the walls, but there were no torches in them. Then I stood still, slowed my breathing and reached out with my senses. The temperature in here was slightly colder than outside. Smell, it's slightly musty in here the air seems a bit stale, this part of the facility seems to have been unused for awhile now. Hearing, it was unusually quite, except for my own breathing and the beat of my heart, there was no other sound, not even from the outside which was still noisy before I had closed the door. Which means that this place is sound proof. I tapped the floor with my foot, there was no echo. The walls must be absorbing the sound. I tasted the air, it was dry. It only further confirmed that this part of the building has been unused for quite some time.

It struck me as weird. This was the main entrance. How could it be unused? I stepped cautiously, making as little sound as possible I expected there to be a few booby traps so I made my way slowly.

Something near the bottom of my feet glowed for a while, so I stopped, and squinted to see a trip wire. It had reflected the light from my pendant so it had seemed to glow. It seemed too ammeter, so I threw a kunai at the tile that I would have had to step on if I were to go over the wire. Nothing happened for a second, then all of a sudden three thick, long spikes from each side of the walls pierced through the layer of limestone to impale annoying caught in between the opposite walls. Thank god I wasn't Nowaki. If it were him, he'd probable see the tripwire and feel all proud of himself, not suspecting anything else.

I hopped above the protruding spikes to interlock each other, just making it through the small gap between the spikes and the ceiling. The spikes were not only for killing, but also to act like a fence preventing anyone but the smallest people to go in any further. Good thing I'm kinda small.

I regretted the thought the moment it flashed through my mind. I never wanted to be short. Ichirou calls me vertically challenged as though he were being nice. But pint sized (Nowaki coined that) or not, I can still kick ass like it was going out of business.

The other traps were easy enough to avoid or disarm, and I found my way through the maze-like entrance passageway easily enough, thanks to the detailed map one of our informants had drawn for us. I'd memorized it so I didn't have to waste time checking. So far, there were no human obstacles, which was strange to me. I had expected to encounter at least three. I glanced at my watch as I ran down a straight narrow path, towards a fork in the passageway. Three minutes had passed, Ichirou and Nowaki should be reporting in in two. I registered a sound coming from ahead the same instant a katana sliced through the air at neck height.

I had dodged by pure instinct, but I couldn't have gotten out of the way completely in that split second. There was a shallow cut and was bleeding profusely already, thankfully it wasn't deep enough to reach a major artery. I wasn't expecting to be attacked. I was still using the Kage gaitou, no one should be able to see or hear me. I'm supposed to be protected from the first attack too. My mind was in a whirl as I watched a tall man, step out from the corner of the wall, the edge of his katana stained by my blood. The passageway was pitch black, except for the light from my pendant, which is also trapped under the cloak of shadow. There is no way I could have been seen or heard. Yes, it might have been a lucky shot. I suppress the shiver climbing up my spine for the second time and took deep breadths.

The samurai pulled his finger along the edged side of his blade then brought it to his mouth to lick it. I knew he tasted blood from it.

"I know that you're there, shinobi. I may not see you but I can feel your presence." Feel my presence? This man had to be someone really experienced at fighting to do that. And he was looking right at me. Fear stabbed me in my heart. This is just like nine years ago. I could feel my legs trembling and the hairs on my skin standing on end.

I tried to gather my wits around me and I quickly reanalyzed my surroundings. The passageway was narrow, with a samurai blocking my way forward, the only other way to go is back. Back to the pit of spikes and poisonous adders I had crossed using some nin wires to make a hair wide rope bridge. Making the 'only way to go' being in the direction of Straight Ahead. I will not die like how Kaoru-otosan did. I'm not as helpless as I was nine years ago.

"Don't think I cannot attack you without my sight, I know exactly where you are!" With that, the samurai leapt forward slashing downwards for a head strike. I dodged to the left and all but crashed into the wall. The sword had slashed open the left sleeve of my jacket, a little more and he would have drawn blood for a second time while I would have lost a hand. I can't use any big ninjutsu in this cramped space. Even if I did it would just slide off him like water from a duck's back. Now that I was close enough I could see the straps that kept the large breastplate in place. I would need to make four precise slashes over his shoulders and mid-torso to get the whole thing off.

"Com' on shinobi, show me what you got? Are you too scared to come up against the big bad samurai?" A part of me wanted to scream out in fear and indignation, put I stayed silent. He delivered another precise horizontal slice towards my mid-area, then almost immediately changed the angle, slashing upwards. I had barely stepped out of the katana's range for the first slash and parried the second with a wrist guard on my right arm before it reached my neck. The attacks have been too precise to have been a coincidence. This man has some way to follow my movement and tell my exact location. The attacks continued, another horizontal slash, two consecutive downward slash. I parried the first with my wrist guard then side stepped the next two. I couldn't keep dodging like that, I'd be forced backwards into the pit. I pulled out four kunai, two in each hand and projected them from my hands to cut the straps. The katana whipped out in a 'z' movement hitting them out of the air before it reached him. I was shocked, no one has even been able to deflect my projectiles before.

"Mi-chan! Come in Mi-chan, target achieved I've got the old geezer and he's having a good nap now." Nowaki's voice brought me back from my state of shock, and warmth replaced the cold emptiness that was building up in me. "Has Ichirou called in yet?" He sounded positively proud of himself.

"I'm busy Nowaki." I tried to sound stern but I was smiling inwardly. The samurai had made another lunged forward, I side stepped again and kicked at his right knee joint. It would have crumpled an ordinary man but the samurai was unfazed. In response, his katana made a clean arc downwards to cut off my calf that had made contact with his knee. I barely got my leg away in time and suffered a diagonal graze. Again he changed the path of his sword to swing towards my neck and I leapt back wards landing badly on one leg, I was close to spraining my ankle. Again the sick feeling of dread was building up in me, I was going to die.

"Mi-chan! I've got the head researcher here with me, how's your status?" It's as though the two of them had planned this somehow, to keep me afloat when I felt like I was drowning. After all, they were the ones who had brought me out of my shell and kept me alive these nine years. " I said I'm busy, there's a crazy ass-" I ducked another horizontal arc. "samurai with a sharp sword trying to behead me in the dark right now, so you'll have to forgive my tone."

"You're serious aren't you?"

As if to answer Ichirou's question, the samurai spoke again. He can't have heard either of us, the shadow cloak blocks sound too.

"You're pretty good for someone so young, but you have to be better than that to defeat me, pipsqueak."

"Hang in there Mi-chan I'm coming to back you up." Ichirou sounded tense.

"Yeah me too Mi-chan! We'll come rescue you!" Nowaki was just Nowaki.

Their love was all I needed to keep the darkness at bay, at least for this fight. "No no, you've already helped me by reporting in safe, you'll follow your orders, complete the placing of the explo-" I parried two strikes with a kunai "-sives then prepare the shogun for the next phase." I jerked my shoulders backwards just in time, and watched as the attacking blade slice the air a hair breadth from my face, across my eyes. I got away with a horizontal cut on the bridge of my nose. "Don't worry, I'm no pushover."

"B-but" Ichirou doesn't like the idea of a damsel in distress. But I urged him to complete his task anyway, his concern had made my heart swell.

"This is the longest time any shinobi has lasted against me, what's your name kid?" The samurai seemed to be getting more talkative. He must be trying to distract me. I cleared my mind, and locked up my emotions. With a cleared mind I could observe him more clearly. His eyes we focused and clear, seeming to glow as he stared me down. His form was flawless, his foot work could not be faulted, even as he was inches away from taking my life, I could see the savage beauty of his kenjutsu, this was a master for sure. How could his senses be so precise? And how did he know my age? This bothered me a lot because he made my Kage gaitou seem completely useless. To enforce the point, he delivered another lunge to my left, the blade sheathed itself in the flesh of my shoulder, while the swordsman swung a fist toward the side of my head. I leapt backward, freeing my shoulder from the katana and the fist whisked across the front of my face. My shoulder was burning, with blood pouring steadily out of the wound. My movement had only made the wound bigger and more difficult to heal. The futile punch was his mistake. He had to place his weight forward on his right leg to deliver the blow. And for once since the start of the fight, his stance had wavered. Apparently, he wasn't as unaffected by the kick I had inflicted earlier, as he had led me to believe.

It was time to strike back. I leapt up and caught his outstretched right arm levering my body up and slashed the right shoulder strap of his breastplate. Using the same motion, somersaulted and landed behind him with my back exposed, cutting the lower strap of his right side, just above the waist, cut loose, the breastplate fell to the ground.

I released the Kage gaitou and turned to face the samurai, counting on the appearance of the light from my pendant to blind him momentarily like it did me when I had just activated the lighting earlier. The shock should give me some allowance to complete making the seals and attack his now unguarded-. I stopped in mid-thought, when he continued to look in my direction without flinching. He's not affected? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! Again his sword came uncannily close to my jugular. I was so frustrated I almost started to question him. When I noticed something. His eyes were glazed over and the irises were practically transparent. The samurai was blind. His eyes had seemed to glow when the light from my pendant had been reflected from them, so he looked like he'd been looking right at me when he was only looking generally in my direction. It was only to unnerve me, making me doubt my abilities when all the while there was nothing wrong. I can win this fight, I will not end up like Kaoru-otosan.

I gave a bitter laugh that sounded throughout the passageway. Insulted my own stupidity. All that wasted terror.

" Amused by something? Com'on kid tell me your name so that I can remember it when I kill you." I would not be unnerved by his speech. After realizing that his eyes were unseeing, I started to observe more closely. There were several lines on his face, especially around the corners of his eyes and mouth. Firm lips that looked like they would curl up into a smile at any moment. He looked like someone who smiled a lot, not unlike Kaoru- otosan. I couldn't imagine how I had related this man to Kaoru's killer. His stance was casual, fluid. His body did not become tense or rigid facing danger.

"The person who asks for a name should first offer his own, is that not the polite way?"

The weathered samurai smirked and swung a murderous arc towards my lower belly. I parried and kicked at his weakened right knee again. He gave a groan and half bent over. He turn his face upwards again and smiled warmly. The radiating energy he emitted stunned me momentarily

"Himura Senshin*."

A warrior named Warrior, how ironic. He looks more like a strong caring father than a murderous sword-bearer.

"Shieien Asami." I answered.

"Shieien huh? Never heard of your clan before."

"Oh is that so? Well as much as I would enjoy chatting, I would like to end this fight, it's getting a little tiresome." I had to end this soon, time was running out. I can't let Ichirou and Nowaki down. I deadened my heart and set my mind to destroy this samurai who had the shadow of a man I had once called Father.

"I agree. And this will end with your death, child. I'm sorry. I was just really starting to like you."

I went through the seals quickly as Himura crossed the distance between us in one leap.

"Kaze kizu!" I released the blade of wind towards him just as he slashed across my jaw. It caught him at his exposed mid-section, cutting through flesh as easily as his own katana. His body was flung a short distance and crumpled to the ground, blood pooling immediately from his wound. I touched my hand to the wound I'd just received, the cut was deep, it had almost reached the jaw bone. The samurai was jerking and coughing wetly. He's still alive after that killing strike?

I walked over slowly, ready to deliver the last blow.

He chuckled as he saw me approaching cautiously, and let loose a series of hacking coughs, his body spasmed.

"I can't believe I was killed by a brat." It was a miracle he could still talk. I was half tempted to prod his wound to see if he was just pretending.

"How'd you know I'm a brat? You can't see."

"Figured that out huh? How did'ya know? I'd gotten really good at fooling all my opponents."

"It took me awhile to realize that. Though by the time I did you had more than proved to me that it was no handicap to you. Firstly, you were just too good to be able to tell exactly where my vitals were. It's pitch black in here and I had a jutsu that prevents you from sensing me with on one of the five senses except touch. But what really did it was when I released the jutsu and when you didn't react to the sudden presence of light after being in total darkness for so long, I knew it was because you can't see."

"Ha ha. Not bad for a young'un."

"Erm… Himura-san, how did you know I am young when you can't see?"

"Look at me! I'm old enough to call anyone young! Ha ha ha. Besides no one would send old geezers to raid a research facility like this one." Well, the lighting was dim during the fight so I didn't notice his greying hair but otherwise, there were no hints on his face or body of his age.

"You don't look that old." Kaoru-otosan was approaching thirty when he was killed.

"Thanks kid, but at least, now that I'm going to die, I won't turn into a drooling senile old fart huh?" I was silent, an apology was just at the tip of my tongue. But how does one apologize to another for taking his life while defending her own? I think he somehow sensed my feelings too. He smiled warmly again. "It's okay kid, you killed me to save yourself, there's nothing wrong with that and it wouldn't have ended without one of us dieing, at least the one lying in the pool of his own blood isn't you right?"

"Yeah." I tried to compose myself. It was like watching Kaoru die all over again.

"Argh.. You really gave me a good one here. Tell me kid, what's your dream?"

"My dream?" No one had ever asked me that question before. The sixteen years of my life had always revolved around this mission then going back to konohagakure. That was it for my expectation in life. I had never thought further ahead in the future.

"Yeah, like what you wanna do in the future."

"I don't know, I guess I just want to go home after this, back to konohagakure."

"That's all? How old are ya kid? What kind of dream is that?! When you young'uns dream, you gotta dream big!"

"Erm…"

"Hmmph. You're wasting your youth. Are all konoha brats so lacking in ambition?"

The old man can still insult me in his death bed. "Do all samurai like to chat with their killer on their death bed?"

He chuckled again. I really don't understand how he can seem so alive when he's so close to breathing his last.

"No we don't, but I've lived this long. Not many samurai live past their thirties. Look at me, I'm nearly fifty! I've had it better than most, I'm content. I just can't get over being killed by some brat without any impertinent dreams."

"Well, it's done. Any last wishes? I might carry them out if I remember." On the contrary, I was sure I would never forget this conversation for the rest of my life. He is the only adult since the ambush of our squad nine years ago, who has ever turned a smile my way. This Himura, had a smile like the warm rays of the sun, just like Kaoru's.

"There is one thing. See here this katana I have? Take it and bury it somewhere, or use it if you want to. When you finally dream those big dreams and you meet any set backs. Remember the sword, it will remind you of death. At the same time, reminding you to cherish life and make use of every opportunity to carve out a place to write your history. Go make something of yourself before you meet the inevitable dead end, kid. And when you finally end up like me, pass it to someone else. I've never really made anything of myself, always the wars and living in the moment, never planned anything in my life. So this way, at least a little part of me is left behind, huh? Just one sword out of a million. I hope it will do some good for you kid, because it certainly hasn't done me any. Take the sword and make it mean more than slaughter. That's all I dare to ask, Asami."

I could hear my father's will echo with the spoken words of the samurai I had just killed. Death he said, is merely to give a reason for us to cherish life.

"Alright Senshin, I'll do that."

"Thank you, Asami. I never had children, couldn't stand brats. But if I were to have any kids, I'd wished that they'd turn out something like you. Strong. You'll go far, I'm sure. Come tell me some stories in the afterlife alright?" He chuckled. He probably didn't expect an answer. But in those few moments, I'd felt closer to him than I had any other adult.

"You'll have to wait awhile, Senshin the senshi. I don't intend to die young. And get in line, when I reach the underworld, I'd have lived a life so enviable hordes of people would gather to hear about it."

He was weak. So very weak. I had consumed his life, to make his death part of myself.

"Yeah I'll expect that…" He was wheezing and still he tried to talk. "See ya, A-sa-mi..i." He died with my name in his last breath, a faint smile on his lips and I felt a little of myself die with him. But not one tear fell from my eyes. It would dishonor his death and his words so I did not cry. I'd just realized I had been kneeling next to his body as we were talking, so I picked myself up, got onto my feet and bowed to the still corpse of Himura Senshin.

I left the passageway with a heavy heart, and the katana of Himura Senshi in my hand. It was time to move on. Nine more minutes till endgame.

"Chi-chan? Ma-kun?"

"Mi-chan? All the explosives are in place, We've also got Shogen Kitamura here with us in the head researcher's office. We're ready for you anytime. You're safe I take it?"

"Yeah you kick some samurai ass? No fair why'd you get all the good kicks."

Hearing their voices lifted my spirits, reminding me of the good times ahead. "Yes I won. I'm on my way to get the stones, get ready for my signal. Oh and by the way, when we return home to Konohahgakure, I aim to become the Hokage."

* * *

Author's note:

1. Senshi means 'warrior' literally.

2. A shogun is like a feudal lord. Samurai from Japan's pre-meiji period serve the upper class of society.

I intend to reveal some of the threes' past in a few more chapters. Look forward to it! Please review! Give me some constructive criticism so that I can make this story better for everyone.


	5. Justice Will Be Served

DISCLAIMER

Naruto world is not mine.

* * *

Chapter 4.

ICHIROU

When Asami last checked back in, she'd sounded different. Subtle, but I could tell. She sounded more like herself than she did in years. Me and Nowaki were standing guard at the facility's communication room, where they made their grounds-wide announcements. Waiting for her to give the OK for the next phase of the endgame.

"Hey, Ma-kun? What do you think about what Mi-chan just said?"

"Huh? It's great! She'll definitely get it, now that she's set her sights. I'll support her, you too right?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll make sure that Mi-chan will get whatever she wants."

"Somehow that doesn't seem to come out right when you say it Chi-teme."

"What do you mean? Don't you feel the same way?"

"Well yeah, but I won't put it quite that way, ya' know?"

"I don't know what you mean. I just feel that Mi-chan deserves to be happy more than anyone, and I won't have it any other way." I was a little put off by his tone, I don't know why but it just annoys me to no end.

"What?! Ya' make it sound as though I don't want Mi-chan to be happy. Of course wish for her happiness too, I just said I would help her with her goal right?! Ya' know, sometimes you're just such a pain, can't I say what I feel without you climbing up my ass?"

Nowaki always finds the weirdest times to take my words the worst way. What happened to his good humor all of a sudden? He should be practically trembling with joy since we were going to blow up this party in just a few short minutes.

Pressing the transmitter lightly, I asked, "Ma-kun? Are you feeling alright? Why the sensitivity all of a sudden?" Nowaki and I enjoy some good humored squabbling from time to time but the three of us have always been tight. Something was bothering the wise ass.

He turned to me, hesitating. A little knot had appeared between his knitted dark brows, I knew the look. He was deciding how much to let on to me. I waited awhile, and watched as his hand rose to touch the side of his neck. He was seeking softly through the transmitter.

"I was just thinking. What's going to happen to us after this is over?"

I was cautious, not understanding where this thought was going. "I don't understand. What will happen to us?"

"Yeah, like we've always stuck together the three of us, just to complete this mission. What's going to happen when we go back to Konoha? Mi-chan's not going to stick to the both of us all the time when we're there ya know? Ya seen how many guys keep following her around whenever we're in a town? Even you, you'll want to make more friends too right? What's more, with you acting like that towards Mi-chan... what's going to happen to m-m- us? What if we split up when all this is over?"

He was worried we that would go our separate ways without this mission to bind us together. I knew Nowaki wasn't an imbecile, he just chooses the right moments to act stupid. But he was always the boasting to travelers of our 'ultimate-super-invincible-friendship', why was he saying this now? It was unlike him to feel insecure about our relationships.

"Nowaki, don't be stupid. Are you afraid Mi-chan and I will abandon you? Com' on, you don't really think that. When it comes to making friends, you always make the most whenever we're in town, Mi-chan just find those stalkers annoying and I'm not as out-going as you. If it comes to one of us leaving the group, it would probably be you." He tried to interrupt but I cut him off. "Even if Mi-chan does make friends other than us two, she'll never let go of us. I can say the same for myself. We've gone through too much together that so many can never phantom, no one understands any of us better than we do. So relax, we're the Unforgettable Unseperatable-even-in-death Brothers-and-one-sista-hood, aren't we?" It was Nowaki who had came up with the name, admittedly, he'd invented it when we were ten years old, to cheer Asami up when she had woken from another one of her nightmares, afraid of the same thing that is bothering Nowaki now.

He smiled at the my use of the name. "You still remember that? That's old, positively ancient. It's the Make-Mi-chan-Hokage party now. Hot off the press. Impressive, no?"

I was relieved that he'd regained his good humor. Then it hit me.

"Wait, what do you mean by saying I was acting a certain way towards Mi-chan? How do I act towards her?"

"W-what? Did I say something like that? Why would I say that? That would be weird ya' know, I don't remember saying anything like that." Short of whistling, and shrugging nonchalantly, it was pretty obvious that wasn't the case. " I didn't say anything like that right?"

This time he was talking to the Shogun and his servants seated on the tiled floor, who we'd ignored for the most part after restricting their movement with a binding jutsu.

They looked shock at his address towards them, and fearful at the same time imagining what he would do to them if they answered incorrectly. They were all probably thinking 'What the hell is he talking about? First they start talking about some Mi-chan. Then they start an argument with each other, and all of a sudden they start whispering to themselves. Now they ask us about what they were saying?!'

"I asked you'all a question." He drawled at them lazily, his tone dripping with menace.

Well, it probably occurred to them that it didn't matter if they knew what Nowaki was talking about. They shook their heads immediately, their head movement perfectly in synch. I aimed a glare their way and they stopped for a moment, and started nodding instead. Nowaki, acted a little insulted, then narrowed his eyes at them. They resumed to shaking their heads again. I was amused by their comical behavior, curious to see how far I could take this rematch with Nowaki, comparing our skills in regards to intimidation. I smiled and pointedly exaggerated the action of tightening my grip on Shizuka's handle; my broadsword. Their eyes widened, and they leaned backwards as one body. Nowaki tried to stifle a stray chuckle and bit his bottom lip to stop himself laughing I was doing no better myself. Man, this is fun. Not to be outdone, Nowaki pulled a dark expression and smirked as if he were entertaining a sadistic idea, and took a step forward, twirling a kunai on one finger.

"So what is it? Did I or did I not? You'all have to mak-"

Our amusement was cut off, however. Asami's voice was annoyed when she'd interrupted.

"Knock it off guys, can you please take this seriously?"

There was an awkward moment of silence from me and Nowaki. We had forgotten that the transmitter feeds any conversation to all of us when it is activated.

"Did you hear what we said just now?"

"Every word. Can you guys stop terrifying the hostages, what if that overweight-overlord dies of a heart attack? Sheesh… And you guys say I get all the fun, I can just imagine the look on their faces when Nowaki talks like that. And I know you guys are staging that Scare-the-dicks performance again, you know I could kick both your butts in that department, blindfolded. So stop it. Keep a good eye on them I've got the jewels already, now exiting the building. Two minutes, I'll give you guys the signal to make the announcement then I'll summon you out of the building."

"Okay, Mi-chan" Nowaki sighed with me in resignation.

"Okay guys, jokes over, you guys can relax, we're not going to eat you."

They settled down some after hearing me say that. Thinking back, it had been all too easy to slip past the sentry guards. Then gain access to the laboratory to capture the head-researcher and knock him out to hide him somewhere. All I needed was the chakra signal of the seal-master who created the first seals we took out. The stakes we had use to absorb the chakra sure came in handy. I think I'll keep them for future use as well. The security was ridiculous. After I shrugged on a spare white coat I'd found in the professor's office and clipped a little card with some scribbling on it, no one bothered to stop me to check my identity. Then all I had to do was walk calmly to the Shogun's inner quarters and say to the guards at the door, "the professor has some private matters to discuss with Kitamura-dono urgently, regarding a recent breakthrough", and I had the Shogun himself along with his hand servants following me like I was a Pied Piper and they were the rats.

It makes me wonder how they could still be in operation all these years. They rely so much on their secrecy status, anyone with enough guts and a good head on their shoulders could have carried this out. I almost feel insulted. We'd spent eight years to discover the location of the facility, only to need eight months of preparation, for a raid that will take only twenty minutes to carry out. Admittedly, the samurai were the greatest threats in here. However, their greatest weakness is well known- their immeasurable loyalty to their Shogun. Just threaten this stinking slab of fat and the samurai will be tripping over themselves to get into the building to save their lord. When all the eggs are in the basket, we'll blow it up and head on home, it's not the most original plan, but it works. Asami would be stationed outside to ensure that no one leaves the facility but us.

Initially, I had opposed the idea of blowing them up at the end. I didn't want to sacrifice innocent lives, Asami had decided it was a necessary evil, that sacrifices had to be made. Those two words, 'necessary evil' were the same words that lab rat had used when he tried to justify the horrific things they did in the course of their research. What am I thinking, of course Asami is nothing like that scum. She would never blatantly cause harm to innocent people. But she was still far from the person she was nine years ago. Watching the man who was like a father to her being disemboweled before her very eyes, then lock in a pitch-dark, cramped room soaked in the blood of your loved ones for a week, all but destroyed her mind. It took her two years to start talking again, and four to recover a little of what she was again. Even now, she still occasionally wakes from a nightmare screaming at the top of her lungs. Which was why we never let her sleep alone, so that at least one of us could offer her comfort after those dreams. We never talked about what she'd dreamed about, but we all knew she was forced to relive the last moments of Kaoru's death over and over again.

An indignant squeal brought my attention back to present time. Nowaki chuckles merrily, pointing at one of the Shogun's servants. The man had wet himself, the liquid pooling towards his lord, wetting the expensive silk robe he wore. No one seems to be able to control their bladder around us these days.

The thought brought back to when we had interrogated that last lab. He was the reason why I had finally agreed to Asami's plans. I would have liked to say that he was mad. However, that was not the case. We had seen him grin from ear to ear and bounce gleefully as he describe every last gruesome detail of how their test subjects died by the Shijins' power. He had looked hungry for more, he was so drunk on the happiness of recounting their deaths, he had completely transported himself away from all the pain that Asami had inflicted on his body during the course of the interrogation. Asami had allowed me to end his life. The urge all but overpowered me when he told us the number of lives sacrificed for their sick curiosity. Eight hundred and fifty-six. Died as their mind and body disintegrated a piece at a time, without any explanation. I dealt out his punishment, carving Eight hundred and fifty-six pieces of his flesh and laid them out in a line infront of him, to acknowledged each victim's unwilling sacrifice. Then I beheaded him with one swift stroke from my kunai. That pathetic excuse for a human did not deserve to stain my Named sword, he'd gotten off easy, judging by the look on Nowaki's face, he would have done worse.

While I was planting the explosives earlier, I looked into the plain white-washed rooms, usually separated into two sections by a large piece of enforced glass. I wanted to see for myself if they were all like that lab rat. There was a small, nagging part of me that had hoped to discover someone from the facility who could express horror, or even regret for the experiments going on in there, I would have removed him or her from the scene immediately to spare his life. But mostly, I was looking to find proof that could to testify for their guilt, to ease my conscience and calm my turmoiled soul, to justify the murders to come. I refuse, at least, to use glorifying words to describe what we intended to do, it would be indiscriminate slaughter and it will taint our souls for the rest of eternity. It will be cold, it will be cruel and sure as hell, it will be done.

Because what I found, it was justification.

In each rooms it was the same scene. Clinical, lifeless rooms. On one side, a group of deathly pale people portraying the very definition of the phrase 'immeasurable suffering', their mouths open screaming screams that would reach no one. Their observers, looked on with their eyes alit, the same predatory look upon all their faces as the humans on the other side of the glass writhe and spasmed, making feeble attempts to break the glass. I had watched in horror as I witnessed with my very eyes the monstrosity that the lab rat had previously described. My body shaking while I suppressed my urge to kill those flea bags, right at that instant. Their damnation was to come. All I needed to do was wait just a little longer.

"Come in, Ma-kun. Put on your most realistic demon lord voice and tell the samurai that their master's in your hands, throw in some lyrical shit about how you'll enjoy killing him then get ready to be pulled out. Chi-chan, make sure you have the controller or I'll kick your ass back in to burn with them."

The wait was over. It's time to pay the pied piper.

* * *

Author's note:

Wow I'm really proud of myself. I'd completed five chapters in a week! This the first time I've lasted past the prologue. Please review! I really want to know what you guys think about it. Do you think it sucks? tell me then. If you think It's good, please give me some encouragement. Thank you!

Oh by the way, I changed the third chapter a little. Go read. It'll tell you more about Asami's character. I hope you' all liked that fight scene.

What do you think about the conflict of emotions in Ichirou? Does it seem realistic enough?


	6. To the Fort!

DISCLAIMER

Konoha doesn't belong to me.

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Chapter 5.

ASAMI

After making that little declaration to the boys, I felt a lot better. It felt like I had regained my reason for living again after all those lost years I had grieved Kaoru-otosan's death. I was reborn and I had a goal. After I had defeated Senshin, it was pretty much smooth sailing. The other two samurai I had crossed paths with were greener then the leaves in spring, they were in a whole different league compared to the seasoned master.

The conversation between Ichirou and Nowaki had melted my soul. Nowaki hated to show any weakness, especially infront of Ichirou. His confession had cost him a lot of pride, so I pretended not to have heard it. Trusting Ichirou to help Nowaki re-acknowledge our mutual need for comfort and support from each other. They were my pillars of strength in despairing times, my sword and shield against fear and my light against darkness that crept in the crevices of my heart. I trusted them with my life, and they trusted me with theirs. I was no longer worried about the future now that the path is unclouded.

The jewels were kept in a glass case, sitting on little cushions of their own. I had to kill two lab assistants and drag a professor into the safe-room where the stone laid. I knocked him out then hacked off his arm with a clean sweep from Senshin's sword. I needed it to open the enforced glass case or The seal placed around it would burn me where I stood. Damn, but this thing is sharp, I had seen it cut through my own flesh easily, but it still amazed me how clean the severed wound was. The keyhole was complex. First, it inserted two needled into the hand to draw blood. Next a scanner or something ran from the tip of the fingers and ended at the elbow of the dismembered arm. Luckily I had taken it off at the shoulder with a few inches to spare.

With the glass case open, I took a few moments to savor the moment. The four jewels were breathtakingly beautiful, unearthly so. They were of four different colors, the first, a deep shade of ruby, that lightened as it reached its middle, the soft shade of pink glowed prettily and colored my gloved hand, I was certain this one contained Suzaku. I dropped the stones into a clothe bag gingerly, trying to be gentle while touching it as little as possible.

Sure they looked innocent enough, but they were more like eggs than stones, for each one contain a powerful Beast God, the Shijin are not to be taken lightly. It was a lot heavier than it look. Next was a Genbu's, such a brilliant shade of emerald, glittering merrily in the fluorescent lights above me. This too, I placed gently in the bag. It tinkled softly like a bell as it nudged the Suzaku-stone. The sound was soothing and I sighed in spite of myself. Next was an oval of pure crystal, with jagged silver patterns branching out into thinner lines until it stopped near the surface of the stone from within. I placed it in the bag as well, as it rested on the other two stones, the sound of bells sounded again, this time a little louder than the previous one. Lastly, was the the magnificent blaze of gold. It flared so brightly, I hesitated to touch it, afraid that it would burn my hand. When I gently laid a fingertip on its's surface, it looked like I was poking a miniature sun, but otherwise, it was cool to the touch like the other three.

A little ashamed of myself for being so enchanted by a couple of shiny rocks, possibly containing four of the most dangers mythical creatures ever known to Men, I quickly snatched up the last stone, Seiryu, I presumed. And walked out the door of the safe room, feeling like a crushing weight I had never noticed before had been lifted from my shoulders. I hurried to exit the building.

* * *

NOWAKI

The talk with Ichirou was a little awkward. But it comforted me somewhat when he said that he and Asami would never leave me. Aww shucks the guy can be cute sometimes. Thank God Asami wasn't paying attention or I would have spontaneously combusted on the spot. I had been rehearsing my little speech when Ichirou fell quiet to be lost in his thoughts again. Asami knows I liked to be dramatic when it comes to this kind of stuff, but she didn't have to put it that way, 'lyrical shit' she said. She underestimates my eloquence. I'll scare these guys so bad, they shake till their pants fall off, watch me.

"Watch this Chi-chan, watch and learn from the master." He nodded at me and gave a mock-modest smile.

I grabbed the speaker and pressed the button that could turn on the announcement system. I couldn't resist the urge...

"Testing… Testing… " That probably wasn't the best opening. "This is Akumetsu-sama! The most powerful shinobi in the shinobi world! I have your Kitamura-dono here in the announcement booth with me, if you want to have him back before I turn him into sashimi, come at me with all you got. I can take all of you swell headed, swill guzzling, yellow bellied swine and wipe you off the face of the Earth. I will show you true horror, I will define what hell on earth means as you die by my bare hands. Then I will have fun with this leaky sack of oil you call a Shogun, I'll rip his skin off his flesh, little by little. Then cover him with maple syrup and feed him to the ants, afterwards I'll carve my name on his back, so that he goes into the underworld bearing my name, before hanging his flea-bitten naked carcass by his ankle for the whole world to see."

I would have said more, but Asami asked me to stop. Even Ichirou's shoulders were shaking, with a real strange look on his face after I'd made the speech. Damn I'm good.

In a few seconds, me and Ichirou were transported from the announcement booth the to cliff we had camped on for the last six months to observe the facility. It had a really good view of that little white building so the fireworks should be spectacular.

Asami greeted us with her a brilliant smile from years back and a warm hug. I hugged her back. Ichirou practically crushed my bones when his freakish arms came around to hold the both of us close, I'll let him off this time.

"Ready to watch the show? He rumbled. His voice sounded funny, like a choking bear.

"Yeah we're ready, now push the freaking button! I got a surprise for you two."

Asami's eyes widened and I could see her eye twitch, Ichirou had mis mouth agape, now that was just rude. "Nowaki, what did you do?!" Wow, Asami's ability to switch her attitude from mothering mode to murderous tigress never cease to inspire the desire to run and hide.

"Just press the god damned button, I didn't do anything stupid. Trust me."

They still looked skeptical so I snatched the controller from Ichirou and hit the big red button.

Nothing happened for a moment. Asami's hand was curling into a fist.

Then came the deafening boom, followed by a few high pitched squeals. A pillar of fire had burst forth from what was once the research facility, followed by streaks of colored fairy lights that exploded as they hit the night sky, spraying a shower of multi-colored stars, that faded away into the night scene. Clouds of black smoke blossomed and rose daintily towards the star filled sky. And as I watched mesmerized as the fires, razed the place down to ashes, I though I heard a soft hum, four voices weaving a complex melody of unearthly beauty, it sounded so tragic, so heart wrenching, like a song from the very depths of my own soul. I cried, like a new born baby taking his first breadth, thankful for the life I still kept, at the side of the two people in the world who loved me.

I felt a soft velvety hand touch the side of my head and brought me to rest on Asami's shoulder. I tried to stifle my sobs and rub away my tears, but the warm fingers had curled around mine. "Now is a time more then ever to cry Nowaki, just for awhile more." Asami murmured I looked up to see her face, her lashes were wet, her cerulean eyes shining brighter than the moon. Her cheeks, though stained with dirt, blood and tears were radiant, her hair had escaped the usual pony tail, and fell in a shimmering curtain, cascading around her shoulders, shone pure silver under the light of the stars, even her creamy skin seemed to glow under the starlight. Despite being wounded and dressed in torn clothing fresh from a fight, Asami looked like a Goddess cloaked in human flesh, smiling down at me. I dared to blink as I drunk in her beauty.

She chuckled, "You're staring, Nowaki. You're making me feel embarrassed."

And I never looked away for the rest of my life.

* * *

ICHIROU

The fire element is the most common shinobi-attribute found in throughout the elemental countries. Fire is destructive, burning down everything in its path, tangible or even intangible things. Fire hurts and when it heals, it leaves an ugly scare that can never be removed from your mind even if it is removed from your body. Now, I see that fire is purifying. Returning everything to its original state.

I felt Asami lean on my shoulder. Her eyes of starfire, her silky hair stroked the bare skin of my neck as the breeze blew through it. Asami skin's skin was glowing as if giving off their own angelic light. She was perfection. I felt complete for the first time in my life, watching the last glows of the ember below, with the most important woman in my life lying over my heart and my best friend beside her.

I glanced at Nowaki who had fallen asleep on Asami's shoulder, dried tears streaked his cheek. He looked so defenseless as he nodded of on Asami's pale velvety shoulder. Then I noticed the wound.

"Asami, you're wounded, let me-" She shushed me with a faint look of disapproval that somehow still managed to look so sweet, it was heart rendering. She laid Nowaki to rest his head on her lap and I pulled her towards me.

"You had this wound for so long and you didn't say anything?" I looked her over to take inventory of all her injuries. A shallow cut to the bridge her nose, a diagonal cut on her calf, a stab wound on her shoulder and a deep gash on her jawline.

"I forgot the pain when I saw that place go down. We've got to tell Nowaki good job this time, the fireworks were beautiful and perfect for the occasion." She smiled the smile my heart knew and missed dearly the past few years.

"You're cut up pretty bad, who did this to you? A samurai?"

"Yeah, the one I was fighting when you guys reported in from the announcement booth."

"Was it because of us? Did we distract you?"

"Oh no, don't worry. On the contrary, both of you saved me, it was very well timed too. If you had not, I might not be here right now."

"What do you mean? What happened?"

"Relax Ichirou, I'm fine now. It's just that, I was reminded of Kaoru-otosan when I was alone in the dark with Senshin."

"Senshin? You asked for his name? That's unlike you, to talk to your opponent in a fight."

"He gave me his name for me to answer."

"I'm so sorry, Asami that you have to reminded of that again." She smiled that bone-melting smile again.

"It wasn't that bad this time. At first I was reminded of Kaoru's death, when Senshin emerged out of seemingly nowhere, I was scared, I was rapidly losing morale. Then you and Nowaki interrupted. I felt so relieved and for some reason, so proud when you guys wanted to come rescue me after hearing I was in a tight spot. Towards the end, the samurai had become Himura Senshin. He reminded me of Kaoru-otosan before he died, Kaoru always talked about the meaning of death to give meaning to life. When he said that he wished I was his own child, it was like I was hearing Kaoru say it through Senshin. It was like he had forgiven me. He even gave me his sword that he had carried for 43 years, it says so on the hilt."

I examined the katana she held. It was without blemish from the kisaki to kashiri. It was obviously well taken care of. "Was that what you were looking for for so long? Kaoru's forgiveness?"

"No, I realized that I was so deeply involved in my own self-pity I had not thought to seek his forgiveness. But he gave me more then just his forgiveness. He gave me a reason to live."

"To become Hokage?"

"No, Ichirou. Becoming the Hokage will only be part of it. I want to live a life I can be proud of, that Kaoru can be proud of, that you could be proud of. I want a life worth living."

"Is that why you're returned to us now?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry I've been gone so long." I looked into her eyes, then at the sword we held between us.

"We should Name this sword. It would be deserving."

"Really? You'll Name this sword like you Named Shizuka?"

"No, not me. You will. Only the master can Name her sword. Since Senshin gave it to you willingly, this sword is yours. Give it a name that would honor her master and the one who gave her to you."

She looked troubled, then she closed her eyes and took a deep breadth. When she opened her eyes again, I saw the resolve in them. "This sword will be named Kage no Senshin. I will be my warrior when my soul is in the shadows."

Her expression was bitter-sweet. Seeming to glow with life, but tainted with sadness. Asami wasn't exactly like herself from those years ago but that alright. She was simply growing up, quickly. I refuse to be left behind, I simply have to grow up faster than her. I held her to me and stroked her soft flowing hair. Feeling her arms wrap around me in response, I sighed contentedly

* * *

ASAMI

We sat closely together, sharing our warmth and joy as we watched the last of the fires die down. The mission was not truly complete till we deliver them safely into the Hokage's custody. There were still some loose ends to tie. I woke Nowaki and the three of us return to the blackened grounds, doing a thorough sweeping search to ensure that no person or article remained to prove the existence of the facility. We beheaded the corpses and that were still recognizable and buried the parts separately in the forest. It was not a statement of cruelty, we did it merely as a precaution. After all, the devil was in the details.

Then each of us settled down again to write down everything that happened that night in as a much detail as we could include. It would the testimony of our mission, for the Hokage's eyes only, when we return home. I included the pictures of key personals in the facility into the report, the first two guards we had killed when they found ourcamp, two lab assistants, the head researcher-cum-medical-nin, the seals master* and Shogun Kitamura. I reviewed the cassette tapes that recorded the last interrogations of the medical nin and the seals master, it's to facilitate the reporting of this mission. Their bodies now buried in the forest along with the others. The stones sat safely in the cloth bag, still glowing cheerfully.

As I packed up my gear, I watched the Sun raising majestically from behind the mountains. Last night, I witnessed the end of my old life. Today, I looked towards the beginnings of a new one. We left the forest with the Lord of the skies painting our backs gold.

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Author's note:

Shijin - Four Gods

Akumetsu means destroyer of evil, I borrowed the name from the manga of the same name. (By the way, Akumetsu is a fantastic manga. If you liked the general theme of Death Note, you'll love this. Check it out in or ) This is not a crossover fanfiction. I won' t be bringing in any elements from the Akumetsu manga.

kisaki- blade point, the very tip of the blade.

kasher- the pommel, the flat of the handle.

I used the japanese terms because I wanted to show Ichirou's familiarity with swords. He should know the right terms of the parts of a katans like the back of his hand.

I'm not so sure about naming things. Senshi no kage could easily mean Shadow warrior or warrior of the shadows, or many other variations. But what is most important is that, Asami named it to mean the Shadow of Senshin. If you read the third chapter, you would have found that Asami said she felt she could feel a part of Kaoru, her surrogate father, in Senshi, ' shadow of a man I once called Father' were the words used. So in a way, it represented Kaoru's spirit. People who don't understand the context would interpret the name as Shadow of a warrior, again, if you era the previous chapters I explained what Senshi's name meant.

Seal master- a shinobi who specializes in seals. They are usually not true shinobi, because they don't know anything of the shinobi way. Just people with a little talent with chakra who learnt how to make and power up seals.

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Hello everyone, it's the end of another chapter again. I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I still couldn't convince my brother to read this fanfiction, he says he'll read it only when it hits 100 000 words. So wish me luck! I hope I can keep going at this rate all the way till the end. Oh and in case you didn't notice, I'm making each chapter a little shorter so that it doesn't get tedious on you readers. Is it alright for you' all? or would you prefer to have a long chapter? Tell me in the reviews soon. Please review! it makes me feel so lonely when it seems like I'm the only one reading it.

Thank you OldRustyManacles for being the first to review, and rags1 for favorit-ing. Thanks so much for your support and I hope I'll live up to expectations.


	7. The Hokage Steps In

DISCLAIMER

Narutoland does not belong to me. Niether does Tsunade. Asami, Ichirou and Nowaki are OCs. Relax, the canon characters are coming in the next few chapters. Just bear it for this chapter and you'll see them soon. Promise.

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Chapter 6.

Konoha, Hokage's office.

The fifth Hokage set at the desk with her back against the view of the destruction site that is Konoha at present time. Tsunade's deceptively young face was screwed up in a mask of concentration as she worked furiously, fighting a losing battle with the mountainous load of paper work lying about in organized stacks on all the imaginable flat surfaces of her office. All this effort wasn't getting her anywhere. Her mind wandered a little as she considered getting herself a bottle of sake.

After Orochimaru's raid, the village was a simmering pot of unrest and general discontent. They now turned to the Hokage more than ever, to lead them in these destitute times. It would take years to fully repair all the damage done to all the infrastructure. Tsunade sighed tiredly, as she signed the new decree that would ensure that Konoha's current state of affairs would not reach the ears of the neighboring countries. She shuddered to think what would happen if outsiders learned of Konoha's weakened state. They stood to be completely eliminated.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tsunade noticed a sudden flare of light coming from the cabinet that kept the things that the Sandaime left behind. She pushed herself away from the table and shuffled around the the stacks of documents on her floor to open the worn oaken storage cabinet. What she found was a white crystal orb nested in a messy pile of old scrolls and stray documents. Tsunade extracted it from the great mound and placed the curiosity on the table to examine it properly. A few second later, the faces of three teenagers appeared in the orb. They were smiling happily, under the sun despite the numerable scratches on their faces, they looked like they had just gotten out of battle. She felt confused for a moment then a revelation struck her. This was Sarutobi's prized scrying orb. The same one Sandaime had used to look in on Naruto life, as well as to use it for peeping on the young women in the hot springs. Who were these young people? Tsunade looked closely into the orb, wishing that the orb would also let her listen to their conversation. They were smiling and laughing so merrily, it reminded her of the children on the streets of Konoha in the times when it prospered. Before Orochimaru's first attack during the chunnin exams, during which Sarutobi was murdered by her ex-fellow-teammate. Four years after that, he struck again, while Konoha was under her own rule. And yet again, the Hokage in office had failed to kill the pestilence.

Maybe this orb shows the future in Konoha, she mused silently. Her finger sliding across the surface of the orb as she absent-mindedly tried to touch the image of the girl with the shimmering cobalt eyes. She stopped herself mid-thought. The girl looks an awful much like Naruto. Wide, honest blue eyes and sunny blonde hair. Though at close observation, the resemblance was less so. Her face was heart shaped, cheeks naturally pinked and smooth like an eggshell, her lips were soft and also pink. A very beautiful young lady, especially when she smiled. Tsunade felt pleasantly surprised as she looked upon the face of the the female. The smile she witnessed had manifested a tiny glow in her heart, something no one aside from Naruto, had done in a very long time. For some un-phantomable reason, she felt like meeting this girl in the flesh.

Tsunade herself was grinning too, feeling slightly more cheered. It was as though the joy she had witnessed on the young strangers' faces had infected her. She placed the orb away from her, but still in a reachable distance and focused on her work.

A few minutes later, the office door slammed open. The force of the sudden movement had created a mini whirlwind in the office causing all the loose documents to flutter and sweep around the office. A blonde shinobi shot towards where the Hokage had remained seated in an orange flash announcing loudly:

"Tsunade-obachan! Come quick! Sasuke's woken up!" A pair of cerulean orbs were glittering erratically, the boy's breath was ragged as though he had just completed a marathon.

Despite the messy state of the office at his entrance, Tsunade smiled widely. "That's great Naruto!"

"Yeah I'm so happy I could fly! Could you come take a look at him? Make sure that everything's alright?" Naruto was so full of energy, he was literally trembling with the force of his emotions.

Tsunade took a glance at the room behind her. Now, in place of the mountains towering neatly around her, was a whirlpool of swimming papers defining the word 'disarray'. She weighed her priorities, logically, she should stay in the office, Shizune and the hospital medical nin could handle a simple checkup. But seeing the excitable boy bouncing in obvious glee in front of her, how could she resist being swept along?

The Hokage conducted the uncomplicated full body checkup on Sasuke, and declared him completely recovered. He just needed to take it slow for a few days, no excitement or strenuous physical activities for at least three weeks. He had to regain his strength slowly, from the period stuck motionless with only a dripper to sustain his nutrition. But she knew Sasuke, not unlike Naruto was never big on the business of going slow. She set Sakura to keep and eye on him to ensure that he doesn't overstrain his weakened body, then left the room so that the teenagers could spend some quality time together. She bumped into Kakashi at the doorway, the jounin was disheveled with some leaves still stuck in his spiky steel grey hair. He had obviously rushed here in the middle of training. Tsunade placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. Then proceeded to make her rounds in the hospital to see how well the victims of the fight were doing.

When Tsunade had returned to her office, she was filled with mixed feelings. She had felt hope when she saw most of the victims recovering well, guilt as she watched the family members of the grievously wounded weeped for their loss and finally, fear that this situation would repeat itself. Her thoughts lingered especially on the Yamanaka clan. Ino had suffered deep cuts to the tendons at her knees in a fight and lost her mobility, however the little blonde kunoichi had managed to ignore the pain and still continued fighting with her clan's trademark mind jutsu. But due to a stroke of bad luck, a portion of the village's walls had fallen onto the Yamanaka as she lay unguarded and unconscious, both calves were completely crushed, bone mixed with flesh and she suffered massive blood loss like the Uchiha. They had to amputate her legs above the knee, Ino will never walk again. It was such a waste. The young female had so much potential, she could have been even greater than her father. But that ship has sailed for her.

When had she entered the ward, Ino was sitting up, her expression was dead. The instant the girl did noted her presence, she seemed to perk up a little, hope glimmered faintly in the pair of baby blue eyes.

"Hokage-sama! Y-you can help me right? You can help me walk again right? You helped Lee too when Gaara crushed his legs in the chunnin exam! I don't want to become a cripple! I'm a shinobi of Konoha, you'll help me recover right?"

The rest of the had looked to the Hokage with baited breaths, expectant. Tsunade was dismayed at the question because she knew that what they requested was impossible.

"Ino, I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that. The reports said that your legs were completely crushed, the bones had shattered and all the nerves were severed. There would have been no way to heal your legs enough for you to walk even."

"What? No! That can;t be, you're the great Tsunade-sama, you're the best medical nin in the world. You must help, YOU HAVE TO!"

"Ino, I'm sorry, I-"

"No, no! I don't want to hear you say that! It-it's that demon woman Shizune's fault! She asked them to cut off my legs! If she just left me there you could have healed by legs. Why did she have to tell them that?! It's her fault! She made this happen to me! How could she do this to me?! How can YOU do this to me! When I was injured I continued fighting for YOU, I ignored the pain and used all my chakra to continue fighting, I believed that you could save me!"

Tsunade winced at Ino's high pitched assault. The bottom of her stomach felt sick with guilt, that she had let this child down.

"No, Ino. If Shizune had left you trapped under there, you would have died of blood loss. When she asked Hinata used her Byakugan to check your legs, she knew there was no way to save you legs. So she had to amputate them to keep your life. Even if she did manage somehow to un-trap your legs and heal your calves, the tendons at the knees cannot be healed. You should know this yourself didn't you try to heal them yourself?"

"No! No! You're lying! You would have been able to heal my knees if you were there on the field at that time! But where were you? With Sakura all that time, you were able to heal Sakura when she broke all her bones in her left arm! And me?! You sent that incompetent student of yours to heal me! She was useless and she didn't want to admit so she lied to you! I've done so much for this village and this is how you repay me?! What is it that Sakura has done better than me that she gets the special treatment?! Admit it! I mean so much less to you than the forehead demon, your prized pupil huh?! Now you come in here pretending to give a damn about everyone, like you're some all-caring freaking saint, you refuse to try and heal me. You think I'll be tricked by your hypocritical bullshit?!"

Tsunade was shocked and she felt miserable as she bore the poisonous words Ino had let out in torrents.

The sound of impact pierced the grieving room. Yamanaka Inoichi had the look of a man about to commit murder as he stared down at his daughter, who was clutching the reddening side of her face. His action had startled everyone in the room.

"You will not speak to the Hokage-sama like this young lady. Shizune-san had made every effort to try to save your life, be grateful that you still live to spout such nonsense. The Hokage has always treated us fairly, she did her best to help you and what did you do to show thanks?! If you need to blame someone, blame the scum Orochimaru and his damned lackeys, not your benefactor you fool. Your bravery in the war had brought great honor to our family, but your behavior now only makes me ashamed to call you my daughter." His booming voice was menacing, his tone harsh. Ino cried soundlessly, her head bowed.

"Inoichi, there's no need to berate your daughter like that. I understand that Ino is going through a lot of pain. The reprimand was unneeded, let her vent her frustration. Be patient with her." Tsunade urged softly to the Yamanaka head. "She will need a lot of care and love to recover from the mental shock of losing her legs, as well as to go through with the rehabilitation. Try not to excite her emotions too much. Be gentle with her."

She turned to the blonde teenager, whose tears were falling silently, with her shoulders trembling and her head bowed.

Tsunade understood. Ino was afraid of being useless. Belonging to a large clan like the Yamanaka's, honor and respectability was drilled in her through childhood. She knew what it was like with your family expecting great things from you. Afterall she was a direct descendant from the Senju line, the Shodaime's blood child. Fear of being a burden was what she suffered most. The poor girl had only been recently promoted to chunnin and now her career as a Shinobi seemed all but lost. But Tsunade had other plans for her. She will not allow this girl to fall into to total despair. The Hokage mustered up a stern face and adressed the kunoichi.

"Yamanaka Ino, I have tried to reason with you and yet you show such contempt to myself and Shizune who saved your life. Do you know who I am? I could banish you from Konoha if I wanted. But I have a better punishment for you. After your rehabilitation, you will be immediately reinstated to your chunnin status, and you will work with Shizune, whom you hate so much, as her understudy. You will work with her as in the hospital and train as a medicine-nin. I will assess you every month for your progress in that area as well as your role as a support nin during missions. I you fail any of these assessments, I'll demote your father one rank each time you fail. Do you understand me?"

Everyone stared at the Godaime in disbelief.

"Any objections?" This time she spoke to the whole room. "Good, I expect you to finish rehabilitation and start your training in three months. Now if you will excuse me, I have important work to do." She said her piece and left the room in a dignified manner. Behind her, Inoichi bowed his head to her retreating back, honored, for he understood the Hokage's kind intentions. Sadly, he couldn't say the same for his daughter. Ino's ultimate scream of fury echoed throughout Konoha.

The talk with the Yamanaka's depressed Tsunade, eliminating the small joy she had found in the recovery of most of her patients, including Sasuke waking from his comatose state. However, seeing as to the fact that Ino still had a little fighting spirit in her, there might be hope in her yet. The Yamanaka clan's jutsu is one of the most eluding kind of jutsu. It's a justsu caught in the middle category between ninjutsu and genjutsu. Ino will not be able to be completely active as a shinobi, but she could better employ that time to further push the boundaries of her clan's jutsu with her father. They might come up with even more mind-jutsu that can help the village as well as Ino to be useful to the village. Afterall, mind-jutsu doesn't really need the user to be mobile to execute.

She cursed Orochimaru under her breadth for persistently trying to destroy the lives of her brave shinobi. If only she had or Jiraiya had not hesitate in killing him when he tried to leave the Sannin those years ago, this wouldn't have happened. Konoha would be reveled in wealth, instead of reverting back to the post-kyuubi state.

Orochimaru was once a beloved team mate. As kids, Jiraiya had always find some kind of rivalry with him, and though sometimes Tsunade felt left out, she had cared for her two friends equally. The Hokage remembered that she once admired Orochimaru for his coolness, unlike Jiraiya who was the loud-mouthed, hare-brained one. He always called her flat-chest Tsunade and she would punch him in the stomach for revenge, Orochimaru would turn up one corner of his mouth, which was as close to smile as they got. This we also one of the reason why they repeated the little exchange so often. Those were happy, blissful times.

When they had grown and went on to take part in the ninja wars, the innumerable close brushes with death and the lives they had stolen from others, had started to change them slowly, subtly. Until that fated battle with ------, for some reason he allowed them to live, with the condition that they place upon themselves the title, the Sannin. From then on, things started to go downhill. Jiraiya, who was a pervert since childhood, had sunk deeper into the Hentai pit. Tsunade had thrown herself into the study of medicine to the point of near desperation, she didn't want to watch being kills in front of her anymore. Orochimaru had changed the most drastically. Or rather, his immense lust for power and fear of Death, had festered and grown so much that he could no longer hide it. He threw himself into research as well, but he worked in the different direction from Tsunade. Instead of learning how to heal, to postpone death, he wanted the power to completely eliminate Death from everyone's future. His intentions were mostly well-intended. However, the road to hell s paved with them and Orochimaru had unknowingly walked right into its fiery pits.

The Godaime tried to shake the despairing thoughts from he head. She spied the little orb perched on the corner of her desk, still glowing. She eagerly brought it closer and peered into its depths to see the sunlit scene of Konoha's future. The three teenagers were sitting in a triangle on a grassy plain, their heads bent over 4 little egg shaped stones.

* * *

ASAMI

"Look at them, the tiny little rocks, shining so happily. Pretentious bastards." The both of them looked at me like I was mad. "Oh come on, I'm not crazy."

"No of course you aren't but, maybe you should rest awhile. We've been traveling so long without a stop, the heat might be getting to you. And you lost a lot of blood yesterday with that fight with Senshin, you could be anemic." Ichirou's tone was placating like he was calming an overexcited child. They just didn't believe what I said. Even Nowaki was siding with Ichirou against me. "Here, let me take your temperature just to be sure." He laid one his hand on my forehead, the other on his own.

"Satisfied? I'm not anemic, I'm not having a fever, I'm not paranoid and I sure as hell am not sun-stroked!" The two of them were still grinning stupidly at me.

"Will you stop smirking at me like that?"

"Alright, alright. But Asami, you say that each stone weighs like, a ton. See here? Ichirou and I can life it in one hand. Are you just trying to sucker us into carrying you stuff for you? You could just ask directly you know?" Nowaki said, picking the Genbu-stone up between his thumb and forefinger, without any difficulty.

"Why would I come up with such a weak lie to cheat you into carrying my gear? I'm being completely truthful here. The stones were getting heavier all the way from Tanuki* Forest. I was exaggerating when I said a ton, but still, they ridiculously weighty. I can barely lift one of them with both hands! See?!" I knelt and demonstrated trying to pick up the Seiryu-stone. I felt like I was weight lifting a freaking elephant.

"Maybe you're more drained of chakra than you thought." Ichirou added. He could also pick up the stones easily.

"Ichirou, be fair. Didn't you checked my chakra system for yourself already? Did I look like I so drained that I can't lift those stones like you two can?"

"Well, no. Your body seems completely healthy. I could have been wrong, or I missed out something. I'm not the best medical nin in the world you know? I'm not like that Sannin, Tsunade-sama. So let's take a rest and regain some of our energy first. Then I'll carry the stones for you alright, Asami-hime-sama?" Nowaki laughed at the honorific.

I sighed. why are they both so stubborn? "Ichirou, I'm not miffed because I don't want to carry the stones. It's just how bleedingly naive you guys are. Is it so hard to believe that these stones, that contain 4 sentient demi-gods, each with enough power to take on the bijuu on its own, can make itself feel heavier for a specific person? Hmm?"

They exchanged a look. "Well, if you put it that way, it seems really possible ya' know? Maybe they don't like you Asami, you were the one to sneak them out of the facility. Maybe they wanted to stay there."

"Are you kidding? Why would they want to stay there as toys for that slimy nest of ghouls? If they were sane they would be more than happy that we busted them out."

"Well, that is assuming that they think like normal human beings. We still don't know the nature of the Shijin. So far, we don't know anything more than what the ghouls have told us, and what's written on these moldy old scrolls. Until we can find some other reference materials to cross examine the facts, we can't be sure what their true nature is. They might have enjoyed destroying those hosts that they were put in. Which would explain why they killed their all containers slowly, inflicting as much pain as possible. They could be evil."

"Aww, Ichirou-teme, you're just saying that cos they killed gals and widdle kiddies too. The scrolls say that they are noble and proud beings, that came down from the Heavens above, to teach us lowly human about morality and humility ya' know?"

"Did a pretty sloppy job of that didn't they? Maybe they were just too bored in heaven and came to play pranks them. Like making something seem a lot heavier for one person, and make the person seem completely bonkers to her friends?"

"Alright I get your point. It is possible that they might be messing with you. I'll carry the stones, give me the bag." I gave a satisfied huff, so he finally gave in. Took him long enough.

As I watched Ichirou picking up the stones one by one, stashing them into the clothe bag, I felt a tiny nagging feeling tugging at the edge of my mind. It felt almost like.. jealousy. When he reached to pick up the sunny seiryu-stone, I hastily plucked it off the ground. I was as shocked as the two when I did that. The action was involuntary.

"What was that?! Didn't you say that you can't carry it without exerting yourself like crazy?"

"Yeah Asami, that was dumb. Ya' had me convinced that you really couldn't pick it up ya' know."

"Beats me. I'm just as confused as you are. I don't know why I did that, or how I did that. I didn't think, I just did."

They both looked at me suspiciously but when they saw that I was dead serious, they transferred the gaze to the Seiryu-stone instead. I regarded the jewels silently, speculating.

"Hey Ichirou, remember that lesson with Minami about the colors representing elements?"

"Hmm? Yeah. That one was really cool right? Minami always waxes lyrical on all her nature talk. Why'd you suddenly ask that?"

"When did Minami teach that? I don't remember any color studies."

"Dobe, you'll never remember anything that doesn't involve food, fighting or f-"

"Ichirou."

"Erm, i mean, ecchi* stuff. Oops almost slipped the other f-word, my mistake."

"Why'd it matter anyway, no one's here but us. It's not like Kaoru's going to smack us over the head or something."

"True, but I would." I got the habit of avoiding the f-word from Kaoru. He said that he didn't want us to act like we're ill-bred in front of the villagers in Konoha when we go home, because it would reflect badly on himself, Sano, Minami and Minasuke's efforts in bringing us up right. Kaoru was like my father. Minasuke favored Ichirou, while Sano more or less looked after Nowaki. Though looking after isn't exactly an accurate description, Sano's maturity doesn't exactly fit his age. The two of them were more like playmates. Minami was everybody's mother. As kids, the three of us would argue about who Minami would marry. Till this day, I maintain that Minami had always seemed closer to Kaoru than the other men.

"Back to the subject, Minami said that each element is symbolized by its natural color right? Red is fire, Green is earth, White is lightning, Yellow is wind and Blue is water."

"Why was Wind yellow again? The natural color of wind is well… colorless, isn't it?"

"Minami said it's because the manipulating of wind is really no different from manipulating of the energy around us. When the energy in the atmosphere is moved, the air molecules are moved, creating wind. Yellow represents all energies, so that's why Yellow is the color to represent the wind element."

"Yeah, but I still don't get it. So each jewel color coincides with the beasts' elements. So what?"

"Hmm, but the Shijin… There are only four of them. Right? One's not right."

"Dobe, we already know that one is missing, Wind is left unrepresented."

"Shut up Ichirou, you're slower than Nowaki this time. He's right one of them doesn't fit. Seiryu, the azure dragon, is the guardian of the water element. Yet his jewel is yellow. Don't you think that is kind of strange?"

"So? What does his jewel color matter? Maybe he couldn't find a blue jewel to seal himself in. Anyway, the stone looks more like gold. Maybe Seiryu liked gold to plain old blue."

"Come on, Chi-teme. The Shijin are the guardians of nature. Heck, they **are** the very forces of nature. They're the ones to make the rules, they won't break them just because they prefer more shiny ya know? Honestly, sometimes you can be so dumb."

Ichirou was scowling at the insult. I nodded sagely at Nowaki. I agreed with what he said. All of what he said. This was a mystery to me and it excited me to no end. Why did Seiryu decide to reside in a yellow/gold jewel?

"Nowaki, I'm surprised at you. How did you become so perceptive all of a sudden?" I teased.

"I may act like I'm dopey all the time, but I'm really a super genius. I just hide it so that I can better employ in times of great urgency, and danger." Nowaki declared dramatically, stroking his chin below a megawatt smile.

"Nonsense, that's what a superhero does. You're no superhero, unless you start wearing your underwear on the outside then maybe, just maybe, you could pull that off one more time." Ichirou taunted.

"Err, Ichirou, I don't think it's smart to suggest something like that to Nowaki-"

"Too late!" Nowaki laughed heartily, brandishing a red pair of briefs, raising it over his head. ichirou and I started laughing too. The next thing I knew, the three of us were rolling on the springy grass floor, laughing and clutching our sides. I'm going to get cramps after this.

* * *

TSUNADE

I accidentally sprayed out the mouthful of sake I'd started sipping down, when the boy with cherry-wood hair started dancing on the spot waving a red pair of underwear above his head, with one hand on his hip and a stern look plastered over his head. The juxtaposition was just too hilarious. I started laughing so much, tears were running down my cheeks. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them fall to the ground hugging themselves. My stomach was starting to hurt from the deep belly laugh, and I was about to choke.

Shizune jetted into my office.

"What happened?! Are we under attack?! Tsunade-sama are you alright? Your face is really red, are you having a fever-"

I calmed myself down. I wheezed out breathlessly, "No, I'm alright Shizune, it's just really funny. I saw something really funny."

"Funny? You were laughing?" She look baffled.

I knew what she was thinking. What could possibly be so amusing that could make a Hokage in such desperate times start crying tears of laughter?

"Yeah, you should have seen it. It would have cleared up your mug full of frowns too."

Shizune gave a half-smile. Ino's situation had weighing on her conscience, she was blaming herself for her incompetence and nothing I said had convinced her otherwise.

"Oh yeah, Shizune, I've got something to tell you."

"Yes Tsunade-sama?" Her voice was gloomy. Ino's training should make life interesting for the both of them. Or maybe it would be a great mistake. Oh well, like what Naruto always says, 'you won't know till you try datte-byo!'

"I've got you an apprentice. You'll instruct her to be a medical nin and she will accompany you when I send you to heal those shinobi coming home with critical injuries that need proper medical attention on the way home."

"Oh, thank you Tsunade-sama you know how much I needed the help. Why did you suddenly think of it?"

"Someone was finally available."

"May I know who is it? Hinata-san? I know she expressed some interest to become a medical nin after the attack-"

"No, it's Yamanaka Ino."

"What?! Is this a joke Hokage-sama? It's not funny. Is this what you were laughing about?"

"No, the two are separate issues. This is not a joke. Since you insist that you were the cause of her misfortune, you'll just have to make it up to her."

"She hates me. I don't want her to continue suffering and be reminded of the incident all the time by seeing me hover around her."

"Well, you both will just have to find a way to wrap your heads around the idea of hanging out often, because I'm not changing my decision. In fact, I've already approved her apprenticeship, and there's nothing either of you can do about it. You will start your instruction in three months after Ino's rehabilitation. I expect you to fully fill in the roles as her sensei, and take full responsibility for her education as a medical-nin as well as a citizen of Konoha."

"Hokage-sama, please reconsider, you could ask another-"

"No, too late. I've signed the document now live with it. If there's nothing else. Shoo, get yourself busy, you have to prepare to make Ino into a fine medical nin."

Shizune cast a dark look my way and stomp out of my office slamming my office door as she went out. I was half-way through a sigh of relief when she opened the door again and stomped back in. Her face was positively murderous and I made preparations to ward her coming attack off. That was when she dropped a file infront of me, spun on the spot and exited the room again, still not forgetting to bang the door loudly. I chuckled to myself. This was the same student who was trembling in her oversized shoes when she first found out that one of the great Sannin was going to be her sensei. Shizune only started being all naggy like her father when I'd brought her with me when I left Konoha.

Well at least she didn't refuse flat out and lock herself in her room or something, it was a favorite past time of hers when she was a child. Life should be interesting from here on out. Team 7 is has recovered its spritit, Shizune was out of her zombie mode and Konoha had a bright future with those three children from the crystal ball in them. What more does a Hokage need to motivate her in her work?

* * *

* * *

Author's Note:

I was taking my time grieving over the idea that most fanfice readers don't like OC characters. Actually, I like OC characters in Narutoland a lot. Well, at least when the writers develop their characters sufficiently which is what I'm planning to do. How's this installment? A little bit of Tsunade in there. I'm going to take the advice I got, the long awaited cannon characters are coming in for the next few chapters. I'm thinking maybe it was a mistake to bring in three OC characters instead of the one I had originally planned on. But I felt Asami would be lonely and it would work against the character I had intended for her. She is someone who can easily turn dark. Most of her soul is steeped in it. She would have fallen in deeply if not for someone to anchor her in the light. So the other two came in. Haha. I hope there are still people who will look kindly on my little story. The plan is to exceed 10,000 words. This was the longest chapter yet. 5,579 words.

Tanuki- raccoon

By the way, updates are going to come in slower because I decided that I need my sleep after all. I've been going without sleeping to come up with the first 3 chapters then sleeping two hours a day to complete the next two. My holidays are going to end in the next two weeks so updates are going to be even slower from then on out. My design course is really hectic, I usually don;t even have time to sleep. I'll try to squeeze time out to update periodically. So I'm going to squeeze out as many chapters as i can for this holiday. Wish me luck!

PS. How did you think of the only third person view section at the start of the chapter? It took me real long to edit it t satisfy me. Did I get it right? Please tell me! I want to improve. Oh and look out for a Kyuubi chapter I'm now planning on writing. A one shot of Kyuubi's life and history in his POV.


	8. Sleeping Beauty Wakes

Disclaimer:

Naruto does not belong to me.

This took really long huh?? Sorry, I was busy getting caught up in Gintama and re-watching the Naruto anime fillers. Hehehe.. I also ended up doodling alot... Do you want to see Asami, Nowaki and Ichirou in manga style?? I didn't imitate the usual Naruto style... I'm not that fantastic in anatomy, yet. But I think they look alright. Meh...

* * *

Chapter 7

NARUTO

It was two in the afternoon when I nearly quashed a little blue and white slug the size of my forefinger. I fell on my ass instead of landing in a cool stance that would impress even the ever skeptical Sakura-chan. That really annoyed me, so I was half-way through the action of squishing the stupid bug on purpose this time when a small gash appeared below the two stalk eyes and the little line opened, to form a mouth.

"Naruto-sama, Sakura-dono asks for your presence. She says Sasuke-kun seems conscious."

"Nani????! Y-you can talk!!" The slug looked at me like I had a few screws loose. Oh yeah, Tsunade-obachan also has a slug that can talk. I just didn't expect this tiny normal looking one to talk as well. Damn, it's kind of insulting that even a little guy like this one can give me that superior look. "Wait did you say, Sasuke's conscious? Why didn't you say so earlier?!"

"As I was saying-"

I didn't hear the rest because I was already running as fast as my legs could take me to the Konoha hospital. At last, Sasuke's awake the baka-yarou, shit what am I going to say to him first? Maybe I should say something cool like, '_why'd you wake up for? I can beat Orochimaru's ass in by myself unlike you._' No wait, that might be little too harsh on the guy, after he's just woken up from a year long coma. I should say something caring like, '_I'm so happy you've woken up. Me and Sakura were waiting, okaeri nasai_' Eww, that's gross. I don't want to become all mushy like that. I could already feel the goose pimples growing on my skin as I pictured myself saying something only a newly wedded wife would say to her husband when he comes back from work.

When I reached Sasuke's room I hesitated to enter. I still haven't decided what to say to him so I peeked into the room from the little window in the door. Sasuke's form was still and he wasn't seating up like I expected him to be.

"Sakura-chan? Did Sasuke fall asleep?"

Sakura looked up at me in surprise. It seems she didn't sense my presence in the room. That's weird.

"Naruto? Sasuke hasn't woken up yet-"

"Nani?! But the slug-, he said-, I thought Sasuke woke up? Why's he still-. If not, why'd you send the damned slug for?!"

"I told Nana to tell you that Sasuke showed signs of waking up. His mind is only half conscious."

"H-u-u-u-u-uh?!"

I was rather annoyed when Sakura didn't answer immediately but sighed in aspiration instead. Could she just tell me already so that I can understand? Seriously, everyone treats me like I'm manuke* or something.

"I saw Sasuke twitch a finger. So I checked his brain a little, there's sign of brain activity. He's reacting to my speech so he can hear us, but he can't really react with his body. This also means that he's probably going to wake up soon. That's why I sent Nana to tell you. Did you hurry over here before hearing everything? Baka."

Sakura was really going into some deep spectrum of medical statistics that I couldn't keep up with so I drowned the rest out. All I caught was that Sasuke can hear us. Sasuke is going too wake up soon. At that time I decided that I should help speed up the process of him regaining his energy to move, by doing what I did best. Infuriate him enough for him to feel a sudden surge of energy, then he'll wake up!

"Sasuke, you can hear me right? You lazy monkey ass. I came back all the way from my travels with the Jiraiya-perv, I mean the great toad Sannin to kick your sorry behind, but here you are sleeping away like some god-damned princess waiting for her prince to give her a kiss, before she'll swoon into his arms. Is that what you think you are? Well let me give you a wake up call. With that ugly mug of yours, that ain't gonna happen any day so wake the hell up already. I swear if you don't get up now like a painful erection from Ero-sannin's books, I'm going to-"

"Naruto! What are you saying?! I said Sasuke-kun can hear you right? Why are you yelling th-these obscene language for?!" Sakura looked really scary at that point, her eyes were ablaze with something really close to blood lust. I'd better explain myself soon or she'll eat me alive.

"Ya' see, Sakura I figured if I said all these then- WHAT THE FUCK?!" Sakura delivered a sucker punch aiming straight for my nose, my neck snapped back from the impact to my face, and fell flat on my ass for the second time today. I swear I heard something crack under her fist, but I felt no pain and my eyes did not stray from the face that had emerged behind Sakura.

"Naruto, stop cursing!"

"No, Sakura-chan-" I was pointing desperately at the form behind her.

"Honestly, this is a hospital."

"But, Sakura-chan." I started stabbing the air in the direction of the now erect figure on the bed, with a shaking forefinger. She was still blabbering away in ferocious disapproval of my improper language. Why can't the lady take a hint?

"So noisy, shut up already…… Yo, Naruto, Sakura." A faint voice cut through Sakura's shrill barraging. Sakura shut her mouth with an audible click and started turning to look behind her. At that that point in time, realized that this scenario was a parallel to a scene from a horror movie I'd watched previously, a guy sitting on the ground with pointing shakily at the shadowy figure behind the heroine. Said heroine starts turning around to look behind her only to-

"Eeeeeeeiiiiii!!!!"

Sasuke flinched from the sheer power of Sakura's banshee impression. One side of his mouth was curling upwards, gradual as a moon unveiling itself from the clouds, as his eyes searched my face and zeroed in on my concaved one.

"You were talking about an ugly mug?" He lifted an impudent eyebrow but I didn't care. I was stunned again and again as I watched miracle after miracle happening before me. Sasuke was awake, Sasuke was sitting up, Sasuke was smirking, Sasuke was insulting me.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura exclaimed after the pregnant silence, and threw her arms along with herself around him, the force of the action causing them both to land back onto the bed. She never was one to do anything half-heartedly.

"Oww, yeah nice to see you too, get off you're heavy. Did you gain any weight while I was out?"

I think Sakura was too happy, she didn't catch what he said, or Sasuke would have had a nose to match mine. I got up and walked closer to the bed side. Seeing Sasuke revived had lightened the air a thousand-fold, I felt as happy as a clam in high tide.

"Saakue! You woke up! Sakura-chan and I thought you were really dead!"

"Shut up, dobe! Like I'll die earlier than you." Sasuke has a way of smirking and talking at the same time. That's why people call him a genius. "What were you going to do to me if I didn't wake up, again?"

"Eh? Oh I was going to say that I'll put you in a frilly dress then call in the Rookie nine to take pictures of you to add into the academy's alumni photo album. But now tha-"

I stopped because Sasuke was amassing something equivalent to a Demon God's killing aura so I decided I had to get out of there fast before he does something exerting like, swinging the hospital bed at my head. See? I can be a sensitive, caring and perceptive person when I try to be. Anyway, Sasuke would probably need someone to check him over just in case his brains had turned to mush from lack of use for the past year. I was rushing off to get Tsunade-obachan to give him a medical examination out of a genuine concern for my fragile friend, not fleeing for my life, I swear.

Anyhow, Tsunade said he's alright, he just can't do any training before he recovers fully. Sasuke's face was all scrunched up, I guess he was pissed at what Tsunade said. If it was me, I would be kinda bummed too, well at least she allowed him to leave the hospital in two days. Kakashi-sensei arrived looking like he just charged through the woodlands to be here for Sasuke. His face was bright red and he was huffing like the narcissist wolf from the fairytales that likes to blow down pigs' houses.

"Hey, Kakashi. Glad you could make it, brought me a present?" Sasuke pointed at the squirrel scrambling out of the unkempt nest of grey hair. His smirk was getting wider.

"Ah? Err, yeah. No. Feeling alright? You had me worried for awhile."

"Tsunade-sama already did a standard physical examination, she said he could go home the say after tomorrow." Sakura piped up happily, plucking some of the leaves out of Kakashi's hair.

"Oh really. That's good." Kakashi seemed shy, he was scratching his nose and shuffling about for awhile. Then he ruffled Sasuke's hair and smiled, his eyes shined before they disappeared into happy slits. " You're going to have to get a hair cut soon Sasuke, you look a little like Akamaru now."

"That's a good one Kakashi-sensei, I can't wait to tell everyone."

"Naruto, wait Sasuke needs to rest we can't have everyone coming to visit."

I ignored Sakura and hopped out of the window sill, Sakura has been getting all motherly these days. Lately, she's been coming round to the motel I'm staying at temporarily since my apartment had been destroyed during the attack, to bring me some food from her family's store, I liked the dango and the dumplings, the vegetables were excruciating to swallow, but the consequences of refusal were a real motivation, to say the least. I can't believe that girls eat these it made me feel like a pet goat when she takes it to mind to bring me her salads. Sometimes when I get irritated I'd ask her to take those infernal leafy demons to Ino instead since a rabbit diet was her thing, but Sakura's face would turn all stormy, so I did the smart thing and I try to distract her with questions about her medical training with Tsunade-obasan instead.

I spotted Choji with a bag of chips in hand with Shikamaru, who was staring up at the sky while he walked.

"Oy! Shikamaru, Choji!"

"Ah? Naruto, what's up!" Shikamaru was the one who answered. He'd become leaner the past three years, a new scar now perched on his right eyebrow, a souvenir from the raid. He had played a key role in planning and coordinating the ambush to cut off the back up shinobi squads from reaching Konoha. His team of fifteen Chunnins had been devastated, leaving only Choji, himself and four others alive, however the enemy had suffered worse casualties. The Konoha chunnins had taken out thirty six chunnins and four S-class jonins from Sound.

"Going somewhere Naruto?" Choji, in contrast to Shikamaru had added on more mass. Ino's injury had affected the Asuma team really badly and Choji uses eating as a coping mechanism, so it figured that he would grow sideways. Both he and Shikamaru had refused Tsunade-obachan's offer to promote them to Jounin in reward of their brave efforts during the raid, they probably didn't want to make Ino feel bad about herself.

Come to think of it, maybe it would be kind of cruel to tell them about Sasuke since Ino doesn't have the chance to go back to her shinobi post anymore. But since they'll find out soon anyway, I might as well tell them myself.

"Sasuke woke up!"

"Eh? Really? That's kinda sad, I've been looking forward to days without Ino's inner fangirl acting up, right Choji?"

"Yeah, but maybe now, Ino'll stop screeching about that thing Hokage-sama was talking about."

I was surprised that they brought up the subject about Ino themselves.

"Tsunade-obachan? What did she say?" Shikamaru was smiling, Choji was munching on his chips slowly. Now that was weird, the combination of panda eyes, eye bags, and a dazzling smile on Shikamaru's face was close to freaking me out. Why the heck was Choji eating at a normal human speed anyway? Wait a minute, what were they doing being out of their houses in the first place? The last I heard of them, they were both holed up in their homes moping, refusing to meet anybody. "Something good happen?"

"Hokage-sama said that she'll be reinstating Ino. She's making her Shizune's apprentice and training her as a medical nin. Ino started shrieking like a damn harpy, but hell, she was saying something!"

"Really?! Eh? Does that mean Tsunade-obachan found a way to heal her legs?" The light radiating from them dimmed a little.

"No. She said that Ino won't be able to join us in most of our missions. She will only go out of the village when there's a need for medical nin to heal returning shinobi. Oh, but when we were leaving the hospital, Hokage-sama told us that there might be a way to allow Ino to walk for short periods of time. She said it was unlikely to succeed and she will only start trying after most of the hospital facilities are rebuilt, but he have to keep it from Ino and the Yamanakas because she didn't want to give them false hope."

"Well, she didn't mind giving you guys hope. That's still great news, Ino might get to walk again and she can still be shinobi, right? The Rookie-nine should get together some day and to celebrate our reunion or something huh? Wait, is there going to be a replacement for Ino in Team Asuma then?"

"Yeah I guess. So damned troublesome." The smile had slid off Shikamaru's face. I understood his feelings. Despite the face that Ino still continues to be shinobi, with a slight glimmer of a chance to recover some use of her legs, she would never be able to complete the team they were so used to. Someone else will have to take her place eventually, it would take them awhile to get accustomed to him or her. I heaved a sigh of relief inwardly, that this wasn't happening to my team. "Don't spread it Naruto, Ino might catch wind of it, when she does…. it'll be troublesome. To say the least."

Hearing the familiar adjective from Shikamaru assured me somewhat that their Team will somehow ope with their new and old members someway in the future, maybe if the replacement was someone like Sasuke, Ino will forget about her troubles and start drooling over him like the crazy over-enthusiastic fan girl she always was.

"Sure, sure. I won't tell no one. See you around!"

* * *

SASUKE

In the time I was out, my mind alternated between dreaming and blacking out completely. I preferred the periods of blissful oblivion to the dreams. Each time my mind peaked to throw me into a dreamscape, I escape with a little less of the self I had built under the protection of the ones I believed in, they kept the endless swallowing shadows at bay. Always, the same recurring theme. I was all alone. Again and again and again. There was no one and nothing.

Each time, I would suddenly realize that consciousness. I could feel the rough cotton fabric under my skin, it bunched in my hand. The slight musty smell of medicine clinging to the sheets, wafted around me, rousing my sense of smell. Someone was talking softly, Sakura's gentle dulcet tones called to me, she whispered my name. My eyes flutter open, I was cautious, afraid to believe that I had finally returned to reality. Punishing sun rays would assault my eyes with a vengeance, blinding me. The pain always reassured me that I was indeed truly awake at last. As I took in my surroundings, I would smile, clustered around my bed were the people who kept me anchored to the world of brightness and warmth.

Sakura, her fine hair was longer than when I had left her, her familiar scent was of her namesake, skin so alluring had a pearl-like glow to it. Her welcoming smile was radiant and her teal eyes drew me within their depths. Naruto, his bright, unkempt hair had exploded into a spiky mane, an insolent grin so wide it threatened to split the whiskered cheeks, was plastered on his face. He was saying something loud and boisterous but was completely incoherent. His usual blazing orange jumpsuit making sore stabs to my newly opened eyes. Kakashi peeped through the doorway, hastily stowing the familiar paper-back ecchi novel into a back pocket. He looked unchanged, the same obscured mysterious smile lit. His only eye disappeared into a curved line.

The one ideal scene I've imagined in my mind that would last for eternity. The next moment, perfection would be splashed with the slimy ink of darkness. Daylight turns to night. Their forms blackened. They turn their faced away from me one after another, I call them back. Desperate to know the reason for the sudden change. Sakura walks away, her silhouette consumed in the darkest shadows, they rise up to take the shape of a man. Another man. He sheathed her in his arms.

"_Unworthy_", they sneered, in a harrowing duet.

Naruto's eyes glow red, living embers danced from them. His teeth were bared, razor sharp, but the corners of his mouth curled upwards. His expression was feral, predatory. "_Unworthy_", he crooned with a manic giggle. Again the inky depths rose, this time to appear as the villagers Naruto had wrested affection and respect from, he had bled, had wept with them and for them, till they finally to accepted him.

"_What did you do to deserve anything?_" Was the haunting question he would ask.

Kakashi simply dissolved into the wall of black, appearing the next instant with a tanto pressed to my neck. The cold steel gleamed in the slim sliver of moonlight, it bit into me, breaking skin. The man I respect above my own father leaned into my ear, and whispered with a slur of disgust, "_Unworthy_" He repeated.

"_Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy……_ " The chant echoed and warped. Turning into a screech that threatened to render me apart. The darkness gathered and made a claim to tangibility. They solidified into drooling beasts, their teeth gleamed along with the unnatural light from their eyes. As one body they fell upon me, tearing piece after excruciating piece from my body. My kidneys, liver, intestines are pulled out between the mincing sharp teeth of my predators, I watched soundlessly as my chest was sliced open by a pointed claw, and my I saw my heart beating erratically, exposed. Blood was everywhere. My blood. Till I was utterly gone, into the darkness I came from. Oblivion welcomed me.

The sequence replayed insistently again and again.

Until a soft touch on my forehead drew me from the bliss of unfeeling. It seemed a little different from all the rest of my dreams. The air was sultry, a thin layer of hot moisture covered the surface of my skin. It was sticky and uncomfortable. A thundering sound crashed into my ear interrupting my epiphany.

"… lazy monkey ass!….. princess… With an ugly mug like that.."

That voice obviously came from Naruto. Those were definitely the words I would imagine him using around me. I stubbornly kept my eyes shut. I would not be tricked to believe that I'm awake and go through another nightmare. If I don't open my eyes, I wouldn't be able to see anything even if it was in a dream, I thought to myself resolutely.

"… I swear if you don't get up now like a painful erection from Ero-sannin's books, I'm going to-."

Curiosity was eating away at my resolve, I wanted to see their faces. I cracked an eye open and was blinded by the intense sunlight streaming through an opened window. Ow! that really really hurt. It was like someone was shoving pencils in my eyes. My hand flew up automatically to crash on my face. It felt like my face was smashed by a rock, but at least it shielded my eyes from most of the . I tested my muscles, trying to move other limbs. They were tingling dully, but didn't react to my effort, I couldn't move the hand squashing my face. That was majorly weird. I'm usually completely mobile in my dreams. After a few panicked seconds, the tingling faded and I could move my body. I pushed myself into a sitting position, the motion was making the muscles involved really sore. No in fact, I felt sore all over. The two of them were still arguing away, my head was taking an awful pounding from their raised voices.

"So noisy, shut already." As I spoke I realized my voice was thin, the back of my throat felt somewhat parched. It was annoyingly uncomfortable. Is this some new way that my mind has come up with to punish me? Every little action brought pain to my body. Naruto was wearing a ridiculous expression, his eyes had widened to the size of saucers, he was stabbing an accusing finger at me. Damn, the part I hate the most is coming sooner than I thought. I want to see Sakura's face before that happens. I tried to smile, my face muscles felt like it would crumble.

"Yo, Naruto…. Sakura?"

She faced Naruto, her back to me. When she turned towards me-

"Sasuke!" Sakura flew towards me and collided painfully with my already aching body. I've always imagined her running into my arms, more gently - without bringing a battering ram to my head. After the stars cleared from my head, I took a good look at Sakura up close. Her hair was longer, her thick dark eyelashes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, I stared at her and waited for the moment of beauty to be replaced by darkness. I waited, but nothing happened.

I was confused and a little disappointed. Why the prolonged suspense? This dream is really different from the rest. I looked back at Naruto's face and I noticed that blood was leaking out of both nostrils, and his nose looked like it had been smashed into his face. I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't stop one side of my mouth crawling upwards. There was still a dull aching nudge as the muscles on my face moved, "You were talking about an ugly mug?"

Naruto started saying something, I replied the usual way, designed to get his underpants in a wad within seconds but he didn't react all that predictably, the insults just seemed to pass him by. Talking was a little painful but it eased the other naggy voice at the corner of my mind telling me not to get too involved, it was all a dream, this is just a prelude to the horrors yet to come. Yet I continued talking and the suffocating black never came. Kakashi came in next, with what looked like a new leafy coat and a furry tailed stowaway.

It was only when Tsunade-sama came in when I finally realized that maybe I wasn't dreaming after all. She started pulling and pushing my limbs around and setting my muscles afire. I don't want to sound like a masochist but, the pain was exquisite. It tasted of reality and reinforced my place among the wakeful. The residue of the dark thoughts continued to reside in the back of my mind, watching, waiting for the right moment to pounce again. But not now, not yet. I just want to bathe in the sun a little longer.

* * *

manuke = stupid/ dumb

Author's note:

Here's the latest installment featuring the canon characters. I don't know if this is really done well, but I've done the best I could. I wanted Sasuke to be more complex and conflicted rather than a straight cut avenger with little attachment to love and warmth. I think I always wanted him to be starved for love, much more than he was in the actual Naruto manga.

Naruto's stupidity really drives me up the wall sometimes but at other times, endears him to me, so I'm not really sure how this Naruto will turn out- caught up in my conflicting emotions. I've also hardened my heart to decide that one of my fav characters in Naruto's is going to be a baddie. Noooo…. but i think it will bring some surprise at to the identity of said baddie. hahahahaha… Oh I'm going to put up a mini-story soon. A little extra tidbit before the next chappy. It should be out before the month's out. Please REVIEW! if you hate it, tell me why? I want to improve! But if you're those that is "not interested in OCs" then don't bother...

Meh... I was actually thinking about dropping this and redoing another fanfic starring Sai.. I have a small prologue written for it... I'll see how things go.

To those who've added me to your fav/alerts thank you so much for supporting me, albeit silently... I really enjoy seeing the emails telling me that y'all took note of my story... it gives me alot of encouragment!


	9. Please Don't kill me! I have some shiny?

Disclaimer

No I don't own the Naruto canon characters.

Chapter 8

HINATA

It's been a three hundred and seven days since _that_ happened. Everyday the same images flash across my mind. I recall the terrifying sounds and the putrid smells, each time never in less detail never more unclear. Always, it was splashed with red, the pain was a vivid searing slash through me. Every passing day was a torture, every one of it a trial more grievous than the last.

I could feel the edges of my mind fraying, tattered and stretched to the limit. Insanity waiting in the wings for its chance to rip me apart once and for all. It had been patient for all this while. I could all but see the flicking motion of it's swishing tail, tick tick tick, just waiting, an ambushing predator cat in position for the hunt. Devious eyes, a dripping pink tongue over vicious white fanged teeth, claws showing and retracting and rippling muscles along its sinuous body. _Why try at all_? it says wickedly, _Give yourself to me and suffer no more_.

In my mind I sputter foolishly, No. I don't want it, I'm scared.

_All the more_, it reasoned in it's velvety purring voice. _Why not? There will be peace, there will be quiet, for all eternity_.

No, no, I'm scared, I don't want it.

_How irrational, I offer you a recluse, to be free of all your troubles. Do you not want to be at ease? What reason could there possibly be for you to stay?_

It was always then I could see _his_ face in all its glorious beauty, a pair of orbs of deep swirling sapphire blue, framed with trembling gold silk, then the ferocious red surging force engulfing all. Blue turns to scarlet, it was magnificent to behold, and yet it sent a deep chilling tremble through me. Fear tore through me. More than I felt trembling under the weight of the mutt, more than the beast in my mind could inspire. It ruled all, and any I could feel about.

_Oh, that. How adorable, the hare is in love with the lion. You could never have him, you are nothing, no not even that. You see, when you lack of everything, you would also be free of defect. But my dear is all that defects are all that you're made of. Take up my offer my defiled little one, I will take you under the shadow of my wing, you will be safe there. _

With his smile shimmering in my mind, we would come to an impasse. I would not give, it's wicked talons fended off by the sword of his light. Alas, my weapon was a double edged sword.

As it fended off my enemy with it's brilliance, it served as a painful reminder. While there was the solar blaze of his light, there was in equal proportion a darkness in me, more poisonous than Insanity could hope to inflict. It had festered and grown in the years I had watched him. I had observed him most eagerly as he fell where I fell. The damned child, the scorned one, as I was. Yet while I continued to pummel down the treacherous height, he had stopped falling. Instead he dug his nails into the walls of the pit I had failed to notice and started clawing his way towards the its mouth, towards the brilliant blue sky.

Go, I thought, go your way into the sunlight and get out of my sight. Who would have known, what did this creature do while he stood at the top? He looked back down into the pit he had triumphed. He saw me.

I was falling, I was resigned to my fate, I was Fallen. And yet why was I not? Here I was, the warmth of the sun nuzzling my skin gently, basking in the light of his blinding smile.

"Hinata! Guess what?"

"N-naruto-kun? What happened?" Speak of the devil and the devil deigns to appear.

"Sasuke's awake! He stopped hibernating!"

"Ah, that's great Naruto-kun."

"Yeah, alright see ya later, I gotta tell the others too."

No one must know about this darkness in me. No one, especially him.

NOWAKI

Being on the move for half a year is a pain. Not that I'm used to settling down either, but Asami can be a real slave driver. There I was thinking that we didn't have to rush anywhere anymore now that we're done for the most part. Only the last delivery to make with no pursuers, we could afford to take the pace down a notch or three. But no, there always had to be something funky going on that just pushes Asami's paranoid button. We're charging forward like a herd of frightened wildebeests, hardly stopping to eat, much less to rest.

After we came to the conclusion that we didn't want anymore problems with the Rockies, we decided to seal them in a scroll so that we won't have to carry them around and slow our traveling speed. The only problem was that I hadn't learnt how to seal stuff away yet. Kaoru did though, which is the reason why we weren't encumbered by carrying the tons of ninja equipment which we have used over the course of the few years this mission has spanned. However, we'd never cared to ask Kaoru where his secured location was and he died before he taught me the technique. Luckily, I'd kept the scrolls that Kaoru left behind and compiled them all onto My Scroll. Over the years I've been teaching myself some of the sealing techniques that Kaoru had left behind but I never got to the one we needed now, because we never really needed it prior to this circumstance. It took me about four days to learn on the go, because Asami insisted that we shouldn't stay at any area for any prolonged length of time, in case we attract any attention to ourselves. Which was sadly true, for some reason, the three of us can never walk through crowds without being assaulted by waves of either perverts or fangirls and sometimes, perverted fangirls. ( I don't believe in fanboys because we all know that all fanboys are perverts.)

Anyway, during these four days, the Rockies were really really freaking us out. Or rather, the one Rocky, the little 'sun' which supposedly contains Seiryuu. The little guy was really annoying in ways that normal little rocks his size, could only dream to become and that is only when they gain the capability of dreaming, but before that, they'd have to be able to sleep then, even before that they'd have to be self-conscious.

Let me get back to the point.

Little sunny here started doing some really crazy stuff after Asami handed all the Rockies to Ichirou. The first thing of all the craziness was that it would continuously make holes in the bag and drop out, no matter how many layers of bags we kept it in. Then, when it drops out it bounces like it was made out of rubber in Asami's direction, all the time. It definitely wasn't coincidence, firstly because there's not such thing as coincidence (but that's a separate topic all together), and secondly, it happened twenty consecutive times. That combined with the fact that Asami felt compelled to touch the Rocky whenever she sets her eyes on it brought us to the really disturbing conclusion that Rocky-sun wanted Asami to touch it.

Obviously we can't let it get what it wants. So Asami had to dodge the most unpredictable bouncing assaulting missile at the most inconvenient moments, which meant that she didn't get much sleep and who's the one to suffer for it? You guess right, me. The little sunny guy has a tendency to home in on her face and it also keeps rebounding faster after every time it misses its target. Which only made it increasingly hard to catch while adding the fact that it burns our hands when Ichirou and I try to catch it. That went on for four days and it must have spooked Asami a little (at least), because she ran our butts ragged for the rest of the journey even after the fact that we were free of the damned torpedo.

Well, at least we've reached Konohagakure. However, I'm not sure how I should feel about this. I'd expected to feel relaxed, the same way Sano always said he would, or maybe a little sense of nostalgia but the first thing that struck me when we neared the Konoha territory was, 'It's so humid here, it's annoying.' I shouldn't have expected anything else, really. I have no memories of this place Kaoru calls our 'Home', sure he weaved really pretty stories about his life there and waxed lyrical about 'the will of fire' that was supposedly inherent in all Konoha nin. To me it was just a whole lot of bull, I understand pride and self-respect. And I would give my life for Asami and Ichirou, I could say the same for Sano, the rest of the crew. But I am just one person, with one heart about the size of my fist. I don't claim to be capable to love a whole village full of people, it's just not possible. If it was anyone else but Kaoru, I would have said that he was a hypocritical slob for saying something like that. I guess it's some brainwashing program in Konoha that's been spoon-feeding Kaoru those crap since he was a kid to be deluded to such an extent. Which I'm quite sure is something I don't want to see happening to either me, Asami or even Ichirou, though I suspect the last one is already pretty much brainwashed.

Besides, we're not even sure that we can return to Konoha for good. From the gossip we'd gotten from the towns on the way, there's been a change of management in Konoha. One of the sanin, Tsunade the slug princess is the newly installed Godaime in the place of Sarutobi. Word's been going around that the defected sanin, Orochimaru'd offed him. So our commissioner had croaked leaving only the old snake, Danzo left in the know about this mission. Delivering the rockies is going to be tricky. I'm pretty sure we'll survive it, but any complications might convince Asami that we should settle down in some other hidden village. Preferably somewhere with a cooler climate.

"Nowaki, stop spacing out. Come here, we're going to discuss the strategy."

"You'd think that a typical loving village that Kaoru likes to lament about so much would welcome their long-lost kinsmen who'd gone through thirteen years of shit to deliver some really valuable demon-stones, with open arms. But, no. Said kinsmen have to plan a way to break in, then hope that the head-honcho doesn't kill them before they can explain themselves."

"Stop whining Nowaki, you can take this as a home-coming party or something."

"Parties should involve lotsa fire and explosions. No one likes a quiet party, then it ain't called a party anymore."

"Nowaki, just get that goofy butt over before I come over and hurt you."

Asami seemed to be in a good mood. I guess the close proximity to the 'land of dreams' Kaoru's been raving about is doing something for her irritability.

The first few days after we'd left Water Country, Asami'd seemed like she'd been when we were kids. Warm, funny and as familiar as the sun. Seeing her that happy had been great, me and Ichirou couldn't help but be infected by her as well. It was just like old times. Then the damned rockies had to burst our bubble. Well, it's not like she went back to being like a three-quarter demon like before, but she'd been really tensed and it'd rubbed off on us as well. Hopefully, when we're done giving the stones to the Hokage, we can live like we always did somewhere no one can ever interrupt us like that ever again.

"I mean it Nowaki, come on. Sooner we're done planning, sooner the party can start."

All that can wait, I better get over there before Asami gets serious.

"So here's what we do…."

15 minutes later

The plan wasn't so much a plan than a goal. Get into the village, avoid detection and sneak into the Hokage's office. In any other village, this would have been a lot more challenging, but this is The Konoha, the land of the idealistic fools. Also called the hometown of the all most powerful ninjas in history, but heck, they're all dead. Moreover, Konoha's human resources are probably near crippled, it would be easy as cake to slip in unnoticed. Asami thinks that their state of affairs would make the Hokage more susceptible to our news. I mean, we bring four magical rocks that contain super power beasts, it should be a much desired commodity for a recovering hidden village? Unless you consider the fact that said super power beasts are more likely to cause more destruction than your average snake sage super villain? (a/n: notice my use of alliteration? I love alliteration, it makes me feel awfully clever.)

Anyhow, we've all come to an agreement. This shall be a race. The first person to reach the Hokage Tower, i.e the tallest building with the '火' sign on it wins. The loser will pay for the winner when we go weapons shopping after we're over and done with our task. I am so looking forward to Ichirou paying for all my stuff! Not that any of us have any lack of funds, it's just so much fun to win, and the whole fun of winning is in the gloating. I better get my shit together, I'm not going to lose this.

ICHIROU

We got into the village easily enough. It was rather pathetic to be honest. Two chunnin guards at the main entrance, with no sentry guards. The south wall completely busted in with only a six-man guard defending it, four genins and two chunins. The average feudal lord we assassinate had at least a twenty body strong guard ranging between middle chunnin to high jounin ranks. Most even have a samurai captain or three within the ranks. This was nothing, we reached the tower in less time then we took talking about getting in. If we do end up being one of Konoha's shinobi, we're going to have a heck of a job preventing the Hokage from being assassinated.

Asami looked kind of dejected when we met at the top of the Hokage tower, the jumble of crumbled grey rubble probably did nothing to support the incredible brick-by-brick description Kaoru gave of his Konoha village. Comparing to that image, disappointment probably isn't enough to describe how we feel, even Nowaki was feeling down. But that probably had more to do with the fact that he lost the bet, though sadly enough I'm not the one who won it either.

"It wasn't fair, you guys heard so much more about Konoha than I did, of course you would have known the terrain better than I did ya' know?"

"Well, that's your own fault for not listening Nowaki."

"Yeah, if it was so unfair why didn't you raise that point before we started, then we might have given you a handicap."

"Shut up Ichirou, I don't need a handicap to kick your ass."

"Ha! Said the guy who's ass just got-."

"Stop it you guys, I'm trying to listen to what's going on in the office, so quiet alright?"

Asami was kneeling with her left ear pressed to the ground. Which was quite the accomplishment because the roof tiles were hot and I mean so hot you could probably start a barbecue there. Her hands and ears had to be fireproof or something.

"Wow Asami, you're good. The ground's so hot I think you can fry an egg on it ya' know? Your ear must be fireproof or something."

Nowaki really doesn't know when to shut up and keep his thoughts to himself.

"Shut up Nowaki, or I'll fry your 'eggs' on the roof right now." And Nowaki shut right up. After awhile, she sat up and formed some hand seals. I sensed her chakra leaking slowly from her, it crept past me in faint tendrils, I suppose they reached the Hokage's office. "The room's clear I'm quite sure the Hokage is alone, Ichirou your I assume your genjutsu's ready, I want the room sound-proofed and safe from some random bugger interrupting our meeting with the Hokage. I'm going to open a hole in the roof, Nowaki get ready your seal scroll, throw up a physical shield while we drop. Tsunade has been said to rely on her super-human strength a lot."

"Wait, Asami I doubt blowing a hole into the roof is the stealthiest entry. Firstly, you'd kill my genjutsu and everyone will see us, then you'd alert the entire village to the attack on their precious Hokage Tower."

"Who said I was going to blow a hole into the roof? I said I was going to open a hole, not blow a hole. Come here, we got to stand as close together as possible."

"But how-"

"Hush, I developed a measure just for this purpose. Nowaki, are you ready?"

"Ready when you are." Nowaki had a determined frown on his face. He only starts getting serious when he's using his beloved seals.

Asami formed her hand seals slowly, a tiny indention forming below her left eyebrow that appeared only when she was very focused or secretly annoyed. The seals were for one of her most explosive fire jutsus in her arsenal.

"Asami.."

"Shut up Ichirou, let Asami do her thing." I was a little annoying to have Nowaki acting all sensible.

With a soft released breadth, Asami crouched into her attacking stance, drew a kunai, and in the next breadth simultaneously carved a perfect molten circle and disintegrated the ground beneath our feet into ash. As we fell, Nowaki slashed his own kunai across his left palm and unfurled the scroll with sharp flick of a wrist, a shrill sound of paper cutting air. His swiped his blood on the scroll and formed his hand seals, then slapped his hands together with a painstaking wince. Immediately as the viscous chakra wall was thrown up, a monstrous cracking sound of impact whipped across the room we'd fallen into. For a split second, I was worried that the thin wall would not hold and gathered my chakra, ready to perform a disarming jutsu. But the physical assault was deflected just before the wall fell and I saw a flash of pale blonde hair half flung across the room. The assailant was the Godaime, Tsunade-hime.

The slug sanin was back on her feet in a flash and was dashing towards us with the most amazing murderous snarl I have ever heard, or seen. This is not going well at all.

ASAMI

I trusted in Nowaki's sealing seals completely to stop the sole female Sanin's punch, what I didn't count on was that it broke under the first blow. As she came rushing at us, completely unaffected from being thrown the whole way across the room and crashing into a wall. For a little more than a split second, I was tempted to meet her assault with one of my own. I have rarely met a kunoichi with a reputation like hers, and I was beyond merely tempted to test my skills against the Slug Princess.

However, a fight right now would be counter productive to our objective here. With great difficulty, I crushed the stray desire. I stepped forward, dropped to one knee and prayed I don't fall into concussion too soon after the blow. Ichirou and Nowaki followed suit.

"Hokage-sama, forgive us. We are not here to fight! We have an important article to deliver." I tried to say it as fast and as clearly as I could. Much as I am capable of enduring pain, I don't really relish the idea of taking one of the infamous fem-Hercules strikes. When I didn't feel a blow connect, I looked up to see a clenched fist frozen a millimeter from the bridge of my nose. I travelled higher to meet the eyes of the woman who would have shattered my skull. As I looked into her whiskey colored orbs, I saw uncertainty, but she was thinking fast.

She withdrew the fist and retreated to her seat at the table near the window. As she sat and leaned back in her chair, her eyes were shielded. She seemed decided on something.

"Rise, the three of you and explain yourselves before I decide you aren't worth my time."

Seeing as to there aren't any broken bones yet, I have to say this is going pretty well. So well in fact, that I'd forgotten how I'd planned at being eloquent in my explanation. The Hokage's piercing glare didn't really help matters.

"Well, to start with I'd like to apologize for the alarm we caused you Hokage-sama, please excuse our rude entry."

"I will consider accepting that apology, in regards to the reason for your intrusion."

"We're here to complete our mission, to deliver the Shijin stones into the hands of the Hokage."

Author's note.

I totally missed the deadline I'd set for myself. it's kinda pathetic. I'm trying to finish the next chapter too before this two week holiday ends too. haha. I'm planning to write some side stories to tide you over my non-holidays. I'm so sorry guys, my design course is really really hectic, I have more projects than I have days to complete them. And I've recently started experimenting with digital painting.

Anyhow, I can feel whatever part of my brain that helps me with my writing shriveling up during the days i've been off my writing. So forgive me if you think this chapter's sucky. Am I being draggy? If you noticed I've been often slipping into Nowaki's perspective, I just love him so much I want to pinch his cheeks. I've put a lot of my own character in him. Actually, the three of them are all part of my character. Ichirou is my more logical and reasonable self, as well as my sense of morality that keeps me from committing a lot crimes I'm really really tempted to commit, Nowaki is the moments when I'm really clueless and lazy yet I can be really focused about what I like he's also the more cynical part of my reasoning, i e he hates losing as much as i do. Asami's the all rounder in me, the part of me that likes to lead, and the feminine part in me. I'm not as pretty as her though.

Is the ending in this considered a cliff hanger? Personally I don't like to write cliff hangers. There's just something in me that prefers to write a complete end to each chapter.


	10. Home Is Kinda Rough huh?

Disclaimer:

Tsunade doesn't belong to me? no Naruto i this chap hahahaha.

Chapter 9

TSUNADE

It was another boring day as usual, whatever possessed me to take up this endless job of stamping and signing like a mindless robot working without enough grease in its joints. The hours seem to be elastic, the days never seem to end. Like a planet in orbit forever and ever and ever and ever…. I wish Naruto was back to break me out of this zombifying cycle.

At least that was what I was thinking before a near literal trio of meteorites landed in the middle of my office and screwed up the rest of my day's schedule. By the time they finished explaining why they decided to drop in through my roof and send me rebounding across my own working space, I realized that some one up there has the weirdest taste in wish fulfillment. I'd gotten what I wished for, in abundance.

The three children from Hiruzen's scrying crystal ball, that I'd mistakenly assumed to be the children in Konoha's future (seriously, what was I thinking? This is Sandaime's legendary peeping crystal after all.) had constructed an A-class genjutsu, melted through two feet worth of stone using an S-class

fire jutsu so quickly and quietly I only had a split second notice for their intrusion, then managed to propel me six feet across my office with one mere warding seal. As explanation for their break-in, they come up with a crazy story about four legendary god-beasts that control the balance of the Earth sealed in 4 magical stones which they had been commissioned to retrieve from a top secret facility that experimented on humans. Apparently this is the best kept secret in the ninja countries, with fifty-eight of the world's top-ranking feudal lords across the five elemental countries contributing money and political influence to this one facility to keep the ninja villages out of the loop. The aim - Power, the feudal lords involved want to boost their military powers by having their troops gain powers like the shinobi to eliminate the hidden villages and overthrow their countries' respective Shoguns.

Their story was so outlandish it wasn't even funny. However, despite the apparent implausibility, I could not summon the confidence to deny their story altogether. There has a been a string of tragedies happening to many of the big wigs from the various elemental countries, but mostly they happened to the eccentrics and shut-ins with a lot of old money in the family. Everything from unexplained disappearances, manslaughter due to internal strife, to suicides.

"The three of you claim to be responsible for the deaths of 58 of the worlds' leaders, you claim that they have been committing treason, do you have evidence of their activities, or even anything to prove that this mysterious experimental facility exists?"

"Of course we do, Hokage-sama." The blond girl paused to eye the boy with a curious shade of reddish brown hair. "We have compiled the reports documenting the feudal lords' treasonous activities as well as the circumstance of their deaths."

"If I may, Hokage-sama. Please let me use your desk."

"You may."

The boy retrieved a scroll from his belt and unfurled it across my desk table. He bit the thumbs from both hands then place his spread palms within the two circles drawn in black ink on the parchment. He whispered some syllabuses and a large pile of documents along with six huge scrolls and three hefty books appeared on my desk. Great, more paper work, maybe I'm asleep right now and this is merely a nightmare I'm having.

The blond girl spoke up again, "The documents to the left are the original resources obtained from the residence of the feudal lords, ledgers where there have been suspicious movement of money, letters and correspondence they have with dubious characters and such, to the right, the scrolls, are the in depth profiling of each target, detailing their character traits and their familial relations, they also record the targets' social and political activity along with photographic evidence to prove them, and all target profiling include a write up on the circumstance of their death. Lastly, the three books you see in the centre are the reports the three of us have compiled over the stages of our mission they are our personal recounts of our activities and others. All these should be sufficient proof that what we are saying is true." She paused for a little while with a slight frown that reminded me of Minato when he was trying to remember something. "Oh yes, we also have the collections of the legends and some of the ancient documenting of people claiming to have come in contact with the Shijin." She turned to the taller boy who had been silent throughout the entire time they had arrived, he looked the oldest of the three, but it was obvious the girl is their leader. The boy opened the bag he had slung over one shoulder and pulled out a file as thick as my head, oh boy. More reading.

With every word coming out of the blond child's mouth, their story had seemed to be a little more believable. But I would have to go through all the documents to be convinced further, and there's a lot of material to go through. Also, they have not said anything of their motive of divulging all these to myself, and mentioned nothing about themselves. What they claim to be offering would very tempting indeed, to a hidden village struggling to rebuild itself. However as to the characters of the children, I could not sense anything but sincerity in their recount.

The three had fallen silent as I considered their story, they seemed a little restless. Especially the one with the weird hair color, they seem like any other of our own young shinobis, it would be easy to manipulate children to believe such a far-fetched story though, someone might be behind them pulling their strings. The entire setup has too many loop holes! Firstly, what they are claiming to have done is near impossible to be carried out successfully. Assassinating fifty eight feudal lords with their own military guard squadrons, yet not stir up the political world at all and manage also to escape any detection of their activities. If what they say it true however, then I would be facing three very cunning and skillful shinobis that could easily be a greater threat to Konoha then Orochimaru.

"I have to say, with these amount of paperwork you present me, it seems to make your story a little more plausible. However, it could also easily be a means of distraction from your true motive of telling me all these. You have provided no information about yourselves or your allegiances nor any justification for your very action of revealing yourselves to me. I find it very hard to approach the idea of accepting all this, that's very close to bullshit."

I had intentionally slipped in the provocation to unsettle them a little, they might reveal some things about themselves to me. The two boys had the most obvious reactions, the red-head seemed to swell a little, and he looked to be vibrating, it was obvious that he was trying to contain his emotions. His attempt was failing, terribly. This one is easily agitated.

The tall one had straightened visibly his hands twitching as though tempted to reach for the sword hilt on his hip, his eyes moved to the girl almost immediately, protective over the blonde, romantic relations might be it. The blond seemed mostly unaffected by the comment, as though she had expected it, instead she flashed looks between the boys and the two abated moments later.

The blonde must have a lot of control over the other two, so the sign of leadership was not for show.

"I understand your reason for doubting us, I apologize for not introducing ourselves first but I felt that our position was secondary to the explanation for our circumstance seeing as to you were so eager to spill my brains over your lovely parquet floor a few minutes earlier-" It seems she's not as unaffected as she appeared to be. She's disciplined enough to control her body's surface reactions but not enough to control her tongue. She caught herself before saying more, seems she must have realized how childish it sounded, the red-head was grinning. "Then let me formerly introduce ourselves. My name is Shieien Asami, to my left, Shieien Nowaki, and he is Shieien Ichirou-"

"The three of you are siblings?" The boys seemed to balk at my question, Asami kept her pokerface. I'm starting to see a pattern here.

"No, however under unique circumstances we have come to share the same last name. As to our allegiances, it's another long explanation. Nowaki?"

The red head kid stepped forward and produced four Konoha hitai-ates. "This mission was commissioned by the previous Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen. He sent four jounins for this retrieval mission along with three children, us. We don't really know why we were sent along but it turned out to be for the best. They were killed in an ambush seven years ago, only the three of us survived and we picked up where they left off and eliminated the rest of the targets to

completed this mission. I suppose that was our purpose all along."

"Impossible! The Sandaime did not keep any records that supports your claim that he commissioned this mission. The method of sending children in case of a mission fail has never been practiced either. Do you think these hitai-ates will prove anything? You could have scavenged them from a Konoha corpse!"

" Check your records, from what Kaoru told us about Sandaime, the Professor would have kept some sort of documentation. There was another person present when Sandaime ordered the mission, Danzo. Is he still alive? He can support our claim. "

The old snake Danzo knew about such a potent power source and do nothing? This is getting more and more suspicious. However, if this were to be a ploy plotted by the old war hawk I doubt the story would be so shaky. After all, was he not a master manipulator of children? No, I must have a better understanding of what's going on before I allow him any knowledge of this.

"The names of these four jounin?"

"Our leader was Hatake Kaoru, Morinozuka Minasuke and his sister Morinozuka Minami, and lastly Suzumura Sano."

"Hatake?"

"Kaoru-oto-… Kaoru was in Anbu before this mission so his records might not be within the normal jounin ranks."

This day just gets better and better, I need time to actually process all these. And the documents, I need to go through them to be sure of their recount. I need to be alone to think this through.. But I can't let them stay in Konoha while I do this, if this is intended to be a distraction, this would be exactly what they want. But if they are speaking the truth, then I can't risk them outside the village either. What to do?

ASAMI

While we explained everything to the Godaime, I couldn't help feeling extremely annoyed, It was really hard to muster up some self control at this point in time, we were so close to be completely free of this mission. And yet this woman, here is taking her own damned sweet time to decide. It's true that I did expect it to be difficult to convince her, in fact I was prepared to have to spend a few days to earn her trust, at least I thought I was. Those long intervals as she fell silent and frowned, I couldn't help feeling the tick in my shoulder that urged me to grab her damned hair and SOMEHOW convince her that it was all true, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to her, an outsider.

To be honest I expected, I wanted an outburst of some kind, that she would ignore our explanation all together and try to overcome us with violence or something along those lines, in fact, compared to her cold, silent brooding, I would have preferred some physical action. I always hated the thinkers more than the fighters.

She had been reasonable, perfectly composed and polite despite the proverbial bomb we'd dropped on her. Rejecting our story and yet taking it in at the same time. It was just plain ANNOYING. While she acts like that I have no true gauge of what she plans to do next, being unsure just pisses me off. Just make up her fucking mind already. AT LEAST SAY SOMETHING!

"Hokage, may I interrupt your thoughts?" using polite speech even now is excruciating, I'd rather someone amputate my leg. "Would you like us to hand the Shijin over to you now?" She continued to be silent, her eyes moving to my own. Her gaze was piercing, like she was determinedly intruding unto my soul, it freaked me out. Her amber depths held the proof of age and wisdom, alien on her own youthful face, but I dared not look away and I forced myself to stare back resolutely, well, as resolutely as I could manage.

"Very well. " I could almost feel a vein jump at that. Were we forcing them on her now? Damn it.

Nowaki looked to me for confirmation then performed the summoning seal. This is the moment of truth, the moment we hand the stones over, we will be free from this mission and more importantly, no longer be under the employ of Konoha's Hokage. If the Sanin decides she wants to rough us up, we'd be free to retaliate. If anything screws up now, I'm going to kill something later.

The four stones appeared as expected like the documents we had summoned earlier. Phew, nothing out of the ordinary, yet.

ICHIROU

I can't help feeling so restless on my feet. We've been standing in the spot for at least three hours as the Hokage just sat back and listened with that masked expression, only speaking to ask some brief questions. Nowaki was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, it was obvious his patience was wearing thin. Asami, was as usual, calm as the sea in quiet weather, but there's probably some treacherous undercurrents there.

The genjutsu I'd placed around the office had been undisturbed so far, I can keep it up for twenty four hours, no sweat. But If we stay in here for too long the assistant in the tower might realize something is up when she realizes she cannot hear any sounds from the Hokage's office. In case of that, I'd pulled up another genjutsu that fools the mind, it would cause her to explain away anything out of the ordinary on her own, but that's only enough to buy us some time to bust out of here in the event she calls for the guards or something.

Well, technically we can just disappear after we summon the stones for the Hokage. After all the mission ends when the Hokage receives the Shijin stones and we would be free of it at last. The only thing stopping us from doing just that is Asami and her attachment to Kaoru and the hometown he loves so much. Initially, I was in agreement with Asami to settle down in Konoha after everything was over, but after some information gathering from the other towns, we'd heard rumors that Konoha had suffered a second attack and was in devastated right while they were recovering from a previous invasion attempt. Which simply means that this village is weak. After knowing that, I don't think this would be the ideal place for us anymore.

Simply put, what I want for us after the mission's over is a quiet life. But knowing Asami's ambition and Nowaki's restlessness, we have no chance in hell to achieve that. But the least I want is that we don't end up sacrificing ourselves in a war between shinobi villages defending a half-dead population, because that's exactly the situation that Asami would put herself in, if she does end up placing down some roots here. She wouldn't ask us to follow her, but we would anyway. Besides, even if it doesn't get to the extent of a war, we'd probably be worked to the bone because of their lack of shinobi and that, would suck.

As Nowaki summoned the stones, I could feel the atmosphere in the office tense. The Hokage eyed the stones through slitted eyes, then deigned to pick up on of them, the Suzaku stone. She stared at it for a few seconds, and her eyes widened. One hand flew to her touch a spot just below her collarbone. The Hokage's eyes flicked back to the three stones still resting on her desk.

"Hokage-sama, is there a problem?" It was Asami.

"No…. Now that you have completed your mission what do the three of you plan to do?"

"Well, to be honest, I'd like to requ-"

"We haven't decided anything yet, Hokage-sama." Asami flashed me a dangerous look when I interrupted her, but the last thing I wanted was for her to declare that we wanted to stay and settle down in the Hidden village as Konoha shinobi, firstly, the Hokage might decide that we meant to infiltrate their village using our shaky story as a means of diversion from an ulterior motive, secondly I realize that the Hokage is likely to invite us to stay in Konoha anyway, after all she would need time to decide what to do do about us as well as to go through the material we'd given her. She'd probably want to learn more about the Shijin through us. So I'd rather she make the request so that we would have room to decide otherwise in the future.

When I looked back to the Hokage I caught a flash of her startled expression as she smoothed her face the next instant. Oh yeah, I hadn't said anything before this, maybe she thought that I was a mute. I chuckled inwardly, until I met eyes with Asami again, hers were blazing. Yikes, she's probably going to give me a good one later.

"Well, then as the Hokage, I extend my invitation for the three of you to stay here, in Konoha for a few days. I'll provide the lodging for the three of you. Feel free to take a look around Konoha."

"Yeah, with a complementary gift of a team of ANBU shinobi trailing behind us the whole time we're here, lovely." Great, trust Nowaki to act up again.

"Who asked you to speak, Nowaki?" Asami was frowning disapprovingly at Nowaki but I could see she wasn't really upset. The Hokage was unperturbed by Nowaki's comment. Well, unless you count her lifting an irate eyebrow.

"Does this mean you turn my offer down?"

"No, we'd be glad to cooperate of course, we won't do anything to your ANBU if they don't provoke us." Asami was smirking faintly, to me it looked more like she was itching for them to do just that. After all, we haven't gone up against any Konoha shinobi before, it would be interesting to see how we stand against them in a fight.

Author's note:

Sorry if this chapter was tedious or boring. I just want to get this part out of the way. If you skipped the entire thing here's a summary:

the 3 of 'em landed in homage's office, explained their mission, try to convince her they aren't quacking. Hokage is doubtful but let them stay in Konoha , but intends to keep a good eye on them. Tada! done, you've just been updated in about 15 seconds.


	11. Ties Run Deep

DISCLAIMER

you know the drill, if I made Naruto, I'd be too busy rolling around in riches to write a thing.

* * *

Chapter 10

NOWAKI

When will we be done… ... When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ... When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...When will we be done… ...

Why is the woman pretending to be all hospitable? We're not dumb, it's not like we expect her to accept all these without suspicion, if people could just be more upfront more often, i would like them a lot better. I can't bear it, Asami asked me to keep my mouth shut and let her do the talking, but it just pisses me off hearing her say -sama this -sama that, she's never used that honorific on anyone who we didn't end up killing anyway. Am I going to have to get used to her keeping up this subservient attitude infront of that woman if we become Konoha shinobi? If that's it I'm going to bust us out of here and we'll form our own village with Asami as a Kage. Now that sounds really good. We could live in the mountains, it won't be as humid as Konoha neither.

Well, at least Asami should be happy, we got into Konoha, with the stones safely delivered to the Hokage, our mission is truly finished. All that's left is to somehow pry Asami away from her dream of living in Kaoru's precious hometown. I'm pretty sure Ichirou will help, seeing him was gaping in horror at the state of the village when we first arrived was pretty funny.

So maybe what happened next was partly my fault, I was thinking happy thoughts to distract myself from losing my patience from hours of inactivity infront of the stuffy lady, when a familiar scene replayed itself. The little golden rock thought it was party time.

The three of us were standing about two feet from the Hokage's desk where the four Shijin stones were sitting on, Asami had her hands folded listening to the blonde woman's instruction, Ichirou was checking for signs of intrusion in his genjutsu zone, I was, well… alright I'll admit it, I was daydreaming. And the next thing we knew, the little guy had rolled off the table of its own accord and and bounced off the floor like a super rubber ball, all I could do in that split second was stare as the Seiryuu stone struck Asami in the middle of her collarbone, and look on when Ichirou caught her as she lost consciousness in two seconds and crumpled towards the ground.

Ichirou's face was blank as he checked her vitals, his hands were trembling as they flew across her body, he was muttering something under his breath feverishly, I know what he felt, my mind was blank too, and in turmoil at the same time. Before I knew it, I was kneeling on the ground with Ichirou, she wasn't breathing, Ichirou couldn't find a pulse. No.

No.

No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No. No. I don't want it, it's not happening. WAKE UP! No, …. No!

Through glassy eyes I stared, watched as Ichirou frantically applied his mouth to Asami's, then pumped her chest.  
1  
2  
3  
4  
5  
6  
7  
8  
9  
10

He sealed her mouth with his and breathed into her. And he repeated it again. 1, 2, 3, 4,… The Hokage's standing behind him, she pushed him away roughly. Ha ha, Ichirou's getting pushed around by an old lady.

Hee Hee. The old lady is touching Asami's breast.

Pervert, pervert… I can't let a pervert touch Asami, if she was alive she would have punched her. I'll punch the pervert for her now.

I felt a hand pull me back when I tried to stand to slug the pervert. Oh, it was Ichirou. Wow his face looked so bad, ha ha. Probably as bad as mine. Maybe more. Ha ha, why is that funny? Oop, my legs feel like jelly, I can't stand. I can't walk.

I can't live. Without Asami, I can't...

The old lady's saying something. What is it?

"her…. coming back. …'n shock" What was that again? What does it matter?

"Nowaki?" Ichirou's talking to me.

"Nowaki are you alright?" Why should I be alright? She gone. She's not with me anymore. She's dead.

Dead. "Can you hear me?"

"She's not dead." What's he saying now, can he hear what I'm thinking now? If Asami is dead, then we all should be.

"Nowaki, come back, listen, Asami's not dead" Does he think I'm dumb I won't be tricked. "-if you don't believe me, feel it yourself." he grabbed my hand and placed in on Asami's neck.

And I was back. There was a steady beat under my hand, it was faint but she was still alive. But her skin was clammy and it was cold. She looked just like those people we saw back in the facility. The Thing was inside her!

* * *

TSUNADE

When the girl collapsed I saw everything happen like it was clockwork. The taller boy, Ichirou reacted immediately. Steadily at first, checking for her pulse, check for breathing, shaky now, he did a full body swipe, checking for internal injury, organs, chakra. All turned out negative, he froze. At the side, the impatient boy, Nowaki was moving sluggishly, he fell to his knees his hands seeking the girl's body blindly, he was getting in the other boy's way from his medic jutsu. Each time the other boy would slap the red head's hands away forcefully, once I even heard a bone crack. But the red head didn't even seem to feel it. I'm ashamed to say I was a spellbound, I didn't react as quickly as I could have. But I was so drawn into their emotions as they tried to revive the girl. Their feelings were so in sync it felt surreal, like I was watching a scripted movie.

Even as I worked to bring the girl round I could see Nowaki break down slowly in complete silence. At first was the denial, then it sunk in. Moments later, he had a gleam in his eye that was very near insane, his body wrecked with inward chuckles of manic glee. Lastly I watched as his face descended slowly into a familiar dark abyss. All that I had gone through years ago when I lost Dan, I saw it rage through this boy in a matter of seconds. I can see it now, the bond that ties this three children together. It was so strong, and yet so fragile. All it took was for one heart to stop beating and the rest would follow, it seemed inevitable like all how all things succumb to gravity. I was in awe of it.

I know now why they share the name Shieien. Even in death, beyond eternity, it chains the three of them together.

But it seems this bond will have to hold in life for a little while more. Asami's pulse had returned, though she remained unconscious. Ichirou was shaking Nowaki violently when he responded only with the word 'dead' at one point. However, he revived just as quickly as he had snapped the instant he felt Asami's pulse. And he started getting noisy then as well.

"OH MY GOD! FUCK! … FUCK! WHY'D THAT HAPPEN?"

"They said that all they needed was a touch for them to-"

"But we've been touching them all the time before I sealed them."

"We'd been wearing gloves most of the time-, Asami always wore hers out of habit-"

"I touched it without gloves tons of times!"

"It affected Asami differently remember? The scrolls did talk about choosing-"

"So it chose her?"

"Probably." Their exchange had been so rapid I didn't have time to get into their discussion so I listened and waited for my chance to interrupt.

"Does that mean it's not gonna… ?" He seemed to pause meaningfully.

"Probably not. It won't have a reason to. But more importantly-" Ichirou clamped a hand over Nowaki's mouth so he could finish this time, "we have to send Asami to a hospital of some sort." The taller boy turned to me, "Hokage-sama?"

"Well. you need to tell what's wrong with her for me to help her." Both boys stared at me blankly for a second before the red head started gushing.

"We think Seiryuu's entered Asami we've seen the inmates in the facility and read the reports she has the same symptoms all the inmates in the facility have died shortly after the Shijin enters them there have been no recorded prevention measure but we think that this time it won't kill Asami because it's never behave like that before but we still think it's better to have her under observation ok?" Wow this one sure can talk fast.

"What Nowaki means is that all we can do now is wait, if any life threatening symptoms appear, could you help us try to keep them at bay?"

"Sure."

* * *

SAKURA

It still feels like a dream, now that Sasuke has revived from his coma, everything feels brighter and more beautiful than ever. The only problem now is to keep him in bed and somehow restrict him to some proper rehabilitation instead of jumping straight into intensive training instead. Sometimes, Sasuke can be as stubborn as Naruto.

"Tsunade-sama, you called for me?" Earlier, I had received a message from Tsunade-sama summoning me to the hospital, she hadn't explained what she needed me for.

"Ah, Sakura. Come in, and close the door."

I realized there were other people in the ward too, their backs were faced to me, both huddled around the sole bed in the room. The one with the smaller build was wearing soft blue-grey jacket with with silver fur lining the edges, and a fur covered hood with wolf ears. The taller one had a tight fitting black shirt that showed off a muscular physique, hanging on a slim waist was a dagger with a hilt and handle that were much to big for the small short blade, a large furry wolf tail of the same color as his companion's jacket, was dangling from the butt of the dagger. Tsunade-sama beckoned me towards them .

There was a girl about my age, lying on the bed, her long golden hair was spilled across the pillows. Her complexion was pale and she was perspiring furiously, a grimace of acute pain marred her otherwise delicate heart-shaped face. I looked for a physical wound on her, but found nothing. That's weird. On the side of the bed, the two guys were watching her anxiously, the one holding onto the girl's hand had dark brown hair that spilled over the pair of frameless glasses that acted as a hair band, pushing his shoulder length hair out of his face. His had a large build, but with refined facial features, his hand engulfed the girl's. You could hardly see her pale fingertips peeking out of his grasp. The other guy had a unique shade of reddish brown hair, with a boyish face and open expressions, He was bouncing impatiently on the bed, but his eyes were trained on the girl. They hadn't spared a glance towards me the whole time I was in the room.

"Tsunade-sama? May I know what's going on?"

"Well, how should I explain this. Anyway, I just need you to monitor the patient's condition. I'll leave a Katsuya with you, if there are any problems she'll inform me. You and Shizune do the best you can to stabalise her-"

"What? But-" The dark-haired boy was the one who spoke, he finally tore his eyes from the girl to fix Tsunade-sama with an annoyed glare.

"I have better things to do then to hang around, being idle waiting for something that may not even happen. Besides, Sakura and Shizune are two of the most capable medical nin in Konoha, they would be capable of handling all but the worst case scenario, even then I might not be of much help either."

"But still-"

"Ichirou, stop. It should be enough, like she said, I doubt anything bad might happen ya know? Seiryuu chose her right? It won't destroy her."

"But what if we're wrong huh? What are we going to do then?"

"If something goes wrong-…. Nothing will go wrong. She'll be fine. She must be."

Their conversation didn't make sense. But I did get the part that they found me and Shizune to be inadequate in comparison to Tsunade-sama. I felt a little annoyed at that, I haven't been training at Tsunade-sama's side for nothing all this time. Shizune was also a very capable medical nin, though we weren't as good as Tsunade-sama but I don't see anything life threatening about the girl's condition. She just seems to have a high fever, maybe a little anemic.

"We should be able to treat the girl, it doesn't look too serious to me. Let Tsunade-sama return to her work-" The dark haired one just stared angrily at me when I spoke, his look was so aggressive my voice just died before I reached my lips. He had jade green eyes that seemed to glow as the sun rays reached into their depths, it sent a chill up my spine. The other boy peered at me curiously for a few seconds, then returned his gaze back to the girl, as though dismissing my presence altogether. I felt my annoyance spike at that, who were they to be so arrogant?

"Alright then, that's settled. Sakura, come out here awhile. Shizune?" Tsunade placed her hand on my shoulder and ushered me out of the room, she gave a slight nod in Shizune's direction and closed the door behind us. When we were alone in the corridor, I started feeling uncomfortable, had I offended Tsunade-sama's honored guests? Or had I missed something crucial in my observation of the girl's medical condition?

"Sakura, I want you to keep a close watch on the girl's chakra activity, if there is anything unusual, tell Katsuya and she will relate it to me. It is very important that you are alert for anything to go wrong, because if anything odd does act up, it's going to do so at an amazing rate. Every second would count, as to whether or not we can save the girl. I said that nothing might happen but it's best to be more prudent. Also, be wary of the two boys, I'm still not completely sure about them. If they behave strangely at all, report back to me as well, understand?"

"But, Tsunade-sama I don't really understand what you mean? Who are these shinobi? if you don't trust them, why are we helping them?"

"Let's just say that they are very likely allies but it is safer to be cautious just in case. Oh, and keep a tight rein on that temper of yours. The two of them might be rather prickly but it's mainly out of concern for their team mate. I'm sure you can be empathetic to that."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Tsunade-sama smiled and patted my shoulder, then left. Sigh, her explanation hadn't answered any questions at all. Does this mean they are not important guests to the village? Well, to be safe, I think I'll try to be nicer to them, if they care about their team mate they shouldn't be too bad. I took a deep breadth then counted to ten before I entered the room again.

The boys had switched places while I was outside, the taller boy was now sitting at the edge of the bed, his hand holding the other wrist of the unconscious girl, while the brown-eyed boy took the chair beside the bed. As I closed the door, the taller guy looked up at me.

He was quiet for a while, then spoke in a rich low voice, "I apologize for my behavior awhile ago, you were just trying to help please don't be offended."

"Yeah don't mind him, he's usually annoyingly polite to girls." the other boy's tone was playful as he poked his companion in the ribs. "Lighten up teme, Asami will be fine." Their exchange reminded me of Naruto and Sasuke a little and I felt myself relax. They were just normal people after all.

"It's alright, I understand, you must be worried about your friend. My name's Haruno Sakura by the way, what are yours'?"

"I'm Shieien Nowaki and the serious one is Ichirou. That's Asami sleeping there."

"The three of you are siblings?"

"Ha, ha. No, we're not we just share the same surnames." I wasn't sure if he was joking or not but somehow I felt that I shouldn't ask further.

"So what's wrong with Asami-san? Fever doesn't look too serious."

"It's not a fever." The tall one spoke sharply, then toned down. "Erm, I guess you could say it was a rare disease? Once there is an instability in her chakra, there's going to be sudden outbreak of several viruses that will instantly break her immune system and continue spreading and infecting her till the body dies. We can't do anything unless the outbreak happens, if it does happen. But otherwise, we expect she will wake eventually then we'll know the danger's over."

"I don't understand? What do you mean?" Their explanation was only making everything seem more messed up. Ichirou-san smiled briefly and said that he understood my confusion, he wasn't all that sure anyway, so all we could do was to sit and wait till she wakes.

We waited for close to twelve hours, Shizune-senpai and I took turns to take short breaks but we didn't dare leave the ward for too long in case anything should go wrong in our absence. The two boys had stuck resolutely to the side of the bed, switching positions every few hours. Their concern for the Asami was endearing, the lucky girl. To have two such good looking guys fawning over her must be great.

Mostly the atmosphere in the room was quiet. I guess both sides were reluctant to start a conversation in case we reach some dangerous topics. The peace was only broken at meal times when Ichirou-san sets to convince Nowaki-san to buy meals for all of us, each time he put up a ferocious opposition, it was obvious that he loathed to leave Asami-san's side. I suspect this was Ichirou-san's way of forcing Nowaki-san to take a break, despite the fact that he took none himself. He remained constantly vigilant, one hand over Asami-san's wrist keeping a tight watch on her pulse rate, his concentration never wavered. It was impressive to witness such unshakable focus.

After observing the two guys closely, I suspect that Ichirou-san and Asami-san might actually be an item. Every so often, Ichirou would caress her face, stroked her hair, pushing back any stray strands that fell over her eyes, each action had been subtle I suspect that this intimacy was so natural to him he doesn't realize what a display he was putting up for me and Shizune, with every touch. Nowaki didn't seem to mind at all, boo, it would have been more exciting to see a love triangle between the three of them, or maybe Nowaki-san was just oblivious, he does seem the type. He had just fallen asleep shortly after dinner, now his upper body was sprawled on Asami-san's bed, across her legs, a small frown stayed stubbornly between his eyebrows.

My legs were falling asleep again and I was about to excuse myself to take a break when Ichirou gasped sharply.  
"Asami? You feeling alright?" A slow smile spread across his face, one corner higher than the other, but despite the crooked angle, it had turned his face from being merely good looking, to be utterly gorgeous.

"Ichirou?" Her voice was a soft tinkling, heavy with sleep. "I'm fine… we're in Konoha?" Her eyes were a beautiful clear blue, they seemed to shimmer in the fading evening light. She didn't notice Shizune or I, her eyes drawn only to Ichirou-san.

"Yes."

"We finished the mission?"

"Yeah, we did." His the corner of his mouth quirked higher as he patted her hair, his hand had tightened on the Asami-san's hand, their fingers now interlocked.

"Hn, so I didn't dream about that… What happened anyway?"

"Erm, we'll talk about that later," His eyes flickered to me and Shizune, " when we're alone."

She looked up to us, noticing our presence for the first time, she smiled sheepishly "Sorry, I didn't notice. My name's Shieien Asami, you are?" I was about to answer when Ichirou did it for me, adding "Hokage-sama sent her and Shizune-san to watch over you." She then took to ruffling Nowaki's already messy hair, then she pinched a cheek, to wake him up I suppose. Nowaki mumbled something vague then nuzzled the bed cover to settle to sleep again. The next moment, he jerked upright so suddenly he almost rocked himself out of the chair, sleep cleared from his eyes at lightning speed.

"Asami! You're awake!" His face broke out into a beautiful wide sunny smile, and he got to his feet to hug Asami, his cheek resting on the top of Asami-san's hair. I noticed that Ichirou and Asami's hands were still interlocked. The touching reunion scene was interrupted when Tsunade-sama entered the room, she asked after Asami's condition.

"Her chakra had been stable throughout the entire time, there was no surge in her coils. I think we were probably wrong in our deduction, I don't think it's entered her."

"You mean I was hit by THAT?" Asami seemed clearly agitated at first, then she reigned her emotions in. "I don't feel any different."

"We'll still have to keep her here under observation for awhile." Tsunade-sama was stern but she sounded relieved. She also looked less stressed than she did when she first left me and Shizune in the hospital. "Sakura and Shizune, you can leave now. Get some rest for now, report back to my office in an hour's time."

* * *

SHIZUNE

When Sakura and I entered Tsunade-sama's office an hour later, it looked to be in a complete mess. Great, now I have to pack everything again. I just did that yesterday! Tsunade-sama may be the kunoichi I respect the most in the world but her total lack of care for her documents lying all over the place really, really makes me want to scream at the lady. I was feeling tired, I had been on edge the whole time we were in the room with the three children. Hokage-sama had asked me watch out for any weird behavior so I had been watching them closely the entire time too, my mind was exhausted. She had been so mysterious and she hadn't told me who those kids were, maybe she would in this debrief.

I noticed that there were some unfamiliar documents on the table, a few large scroll and a couple of thick leather bound books, were sprawled over the office table, a few photographs were peeking from the books, I didn't recognize any of the faces I could see.

"Shizune, what did you think about the three kids?" Tsunade-sama's voice startled me.

"Huh? Erm, they seemed pretty much normal, they weren't behaving strangely or anything. Mostly worried over their friend, the girl Asami."

"What about you Sakura? What do you think about them?"

"I think they're alright, they seem genuinely concerned over Asami-san although they weren't exactly eager to talk to me or Shizune. I think they are good people, since they care so much about each other."

"Yes, I have seen their attachment to each other first hand, they care for each other so much its to a fault."

"Hokage-sama, will you please tell us who they are? Why did they come to Konoha?" It was Sakura who asked.

"The three of them were born in Konoha. Some circumstances forced them to be raised outside the village but I'm thinking of letting them become Konoha citizens, we need more shinobi in this village, especially more of their calibre and specializations."

"But, Tsunade-sama it seems highly suspicious that they would seek to come back after so many years. Where are their parents? Do they have proof that they were Konoha citizens when they were born? They could be spies from another village. You know that Iwa has been making motions to oppose Konoha, maybe-"

"Shizune, of course I have considered all these. I would not decide such things without valid proof and thorough considerations. I don't mean to induct them in our shinobi force at once, more like put them on a probation period. When they prove their loyalty completely, then I will truly let them into the force. Relax, do I look at all easily fooled to you?"

"Then, about the reason why we had to stay in the ward, to watch the girl's chakra levels is because? They were rather vague about the disease that the girl suffered."

"She wasn't diseased, when she collapsed in my office, we suspected she might be possessed by a beast of sorts, that might try to destroy her from the inside so I had you and Sakura watch in case that Ichirou boy can't handle whatever the situation calls for." She paused then waited, Sakura was absorbed in her own thoughts, my questions were pretty much appeased but there was still something nagging at me that Tsundade-sama was hiding something. But I was distracted fro that thought when I felt a leaf fall on my shoulder, and I looked up to see a huge perfectly circular hole in the middle of the roof.

"Hokage-sama, why is there a hole in the roof?"

"Ah, that reminded me, thanks Shizune, could you get someone to fix the roof? Get it done soon, I don't want it to rain and wet all the important documents."

"Hokage-sama? Why is there such a big hole in the middle of the roof? And anyway, since when did you care about your paperwork?"

"Well, I have other documents that are really important in the office. Besides, I wasn't the one who made the hole, it was those bum kids. They'd literally dropped in on me."

"They cut through all that roof?"

"Yeah."

"The roof is made with three and a half feet worth of the hardest metal known to men, you said that they could cut through that?"

"Uh-huh."

"How did they do that?"

"Oh it was the girl, she said she used a fire jutsu."

"But the edges were so clean, she can't have blasted through the roof so neatly. Anyway, you just let them drop in and you what? Welcomed them to Konoha with open arms?"

"Of course not, I was ready to bust their skulls inwards but the Nowaki kid had a fuuninjustu that rebounded across the office when I tried, probably a physical shield of some sort. You didn't hear anything although you still were outside when that happened right? That's because the Ichirou boy had set up a genjutsu or something around the tower."

"They had you trapped?" Sakura asked the question before I could.

"No not really, the physical wall thing fell immediately after impact and I would have been able to fight them, but they surrendered, so I listened to their explanation."

That was a lot to digest. It's not easy to sneak up on the guards around the Hokage tower much less on Tsunade-sama as well, and they had been able to deflect her superhuman strength and come out completely unscathed. The fact the girl could burn her way throughout the roof so completely without alerting Tsunade would probably mean that she did it in an instant. The power of that jutsu must be tremendous, and yet controlled so well that it is so clean in the execution must mean a crazy amount of chakra lastly, for a sixteen year old boy to have cast a genjutsu that could slip the notice of Kurenai, who was on shift at the time must mean it is probably at the level of what an experienced Uchiha is capable of. This must be what she means about their calibre and specialities. If they were at this level at such an age, imagine how powerful they could be in a few years time.

"Where would you put their level of ability?"

"From their reports, and from what I've seen so far, I'd say all of them would make the mid-jounin range. They each could take on a samurai on their own and live, I'd say that's a good gauge. I'd have to see them actually fight to get a better read on them. But from what I've learnt, the girl is the leader and the best fighter out of all of them, favoring taijutsu and ninjutsu. Nowaki, mostly plays the role of the saboteur, he has a rare talent in sealing. I think Jiraiya might take an interest in him. Ichirou is the medic and gifted at genjutsus, I'd say he's as good as kurenai, if not better, he's also a kenjutsu master. I recognize his sword but I don't remember where I'd seen it or heard of it. Together, they make an almost perfectly balanced team with a lot of firepower to spare."

That's weird, I didn't see a sword in the room. All I saw was a weird looking dagger.

Sakura spoke up "What sword?"

"The dagger he had is actually a sword, you have to make a blood pact with the sword to wield it in it's proper form. I remember its supposed to be a blade that's three times the size of the ordinary katana very little people can handle the weapon without killing themselves. I has a pretty bloody history. Oh, I remember now, the sword was made by the Senju clan in the the time of the Sage of the six paths. But it's supposed to be sealed in some mountain somewhere, it was thought to be possessed by a demon. Oh nevermind that, about your orders. Sakura, since Sasuke's just awakened, I'd say neither you nor Naruto would be eager to take on any missions. Get Kakashi to report to my office at nine in the morning sharp, tell him he better be on time if he doesn't want the Hatake line to die out in his generation."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama. I'll tell him that." Sakura was chuckling with a sweet expression. At times like this I always imagine a dark persona of her saying something evil, in her head.

"Shizune, help me contact Jiraya, I need him to check up on something for me."

"Yes Hokage-sama."

"Very good, you're both dismissed for the day. Go get some rest." I was about to turn and walk out the door immediately, "Oh and Sakura, I'd like it if you can get closer to them, this isn't an order. But it would be good for someone to know more about their background personally, or alternatively you could get Naruto to do that. He has a knack at forming friendships fast."

"I'll do that Tsunade-sama."

"Good. Now leave before you fall asleep on your feet, the both of you. And good job today." Tsunade-sama was smiling when she shooed us out of her office. It's good that she was in a better mood I guess.

* * *

SAKURA

I just wanted to drop in on the three of them before heading back home, I hadn't suspected I would witness a scene quite like that. When I entered the hospital ward, it was dark. But I could see at least, that Ichirou and Nowaki were no longer where I had left them, I figured that they'd probably gone to the temporary lodgings where Tsunade-sama arranged for them to use while they were in the village, to get some rest. But when a strong wind blew and the curtains parted, moonlight poured in from the window for a long moment. The bed was lit by the soft silvery moonlight as if by magic. Asami no longer rested alone, she had her face buried against Ichirou's chest, using his long arm as a pillow, as all three of them were crammed on the bed, their bodies pressed closely together, their legs entangled. Nowaki was sleeping behind Asami, his face looked utterly defenseless in sleep this time, there was a fistful of Asami's hair in his hand that were brought to his lips, the other hand was intertwined with Asami's own. Ichirou's had taken her other hand their fingers locked together, placed over his heart.

When I had returned to home, I finally realized what it was about it that had shaken me so thoroughly. What I had seen, was beyond friendship, or love, or even dependency, it was simply eternal.

* * *

Author's note:

Ah, I love the last scene. So cute. I've been wanting to slip in a scene like this for awhile now. Yay! Look forward to the next chap, Naruto and Asami meet for the first time! I believe this is the longest chapter I've written so far, close to 6000! haha I'm pretty happy with it.


	12. Slicing Fishcake is Fun

DISCLAIMER

Me no create Nar-oooo-toe. Me am troll.

Chapter 11

ASAMI

Nowaki was still snoring softly in my ear when I awoke, his breadth tickled so I tried to squirm away, it was a natural reaction. The only problem is that the hospital bed was kinda small and Ichirou's big warm body was already perched rather precariously at the edge of the bed, and there was only one way to go. As Ichirou fell, the rumpled blanket that twined between his legs and mine pulled me along and I dropped with him to land face first on his rock hard chest muscles. Ouch, he's hardly a cushion.

Ichirou didn't give the slightest twitch of discomfort at impact, and if I didn't feel his chest move up and down with his breathing, I'd have thought he was dead. Not exactly a surprising thing, I'm the only light sleeper out of the three of us. Nowaki was still sleeping like a log, only one of his legs had been entangled in the stupid blanket, so all the movement did was to move his leg to the edge of the bed. Now, he took up the space of the entire bed. Jerk.

I dragged Ichirou off the floor and rolled him onto the bed, his big build squashing Nowaki's outstretched leg. It'll be interesting to watch how they react when they wake. But first, I need to stretch my legs a little and take a look around Konoha myself.

It's been awhile since the three of us had last slept on an actual bed, much less altogether like that. It's kind of nice to finally be able to do so, I had a really good dreamless sleep last night, I can feel my body practically bursting with energy right now. I took a glance around the hospital corridor, the name plate on the door of the ward next to mine said: Uchiha Sasuke. It's the clan with the sharingan, I heard they were massacred a few years ago, the youngest member of the clan at the time was the only survivor. I felt my curiosity pique. I've never even seen the sharingan before, much less fight someone using it. I concentrated on masking my chakra signature, then peeked in through the crack of the door, that was slightly ajar.

"Is the coast clear?" The one sitting on the hospital bed was speaking, he had jet black, spiky hair and matching dark eyes. Oops, he's changing. He pulled on a navy blue short sleeved shirt with an emblem at the back.

"Yeah, Sakura's gone to look for Kakashi to meet Tsunade or something. She should be gone for awhile, long enough for us to go to training field fourteen, it's been unused for awhile so Sakura probably won't find us too soon." The person talking to him was wearing a gaudy black and orange ensemble, his bright yellow hair was equally ostentatious, and he had three whisker marks on each side of his face. And here I thought that my hair color was rare.

"Good, thank god for that, now I can finally stretch my legs, I was starting to think she would never leave me alone. I wonder what it was that was so important."

"Ah, who cares. Anyway, no one's around now, so let's go before someone comes, dattebyo!" The blonde one walked towards the widow, pushing up the glass, when he turned around to look back at the Uchiha, I saw that his eyes were the same color as mine, a clear sparkling cerulean. He hopped out of the window sill the Uchiha followed shortly.

I followed them as the made their way easily through partly destroyed winding alleys and the streets of the village, there weren't many people around. It was so unlike the other hidden villages I'd seen, I was really disappointed. Kaoru always said that Konoha's streets were always busy with people with so much to do. But this is really only a little better than a ghost town. Soon they pulled away from the town, and they made their way towards the foresting along the border of the village. They soon came upon a clearing, the orange one threw himself to the grassy ground and stretched.

"Naruto, don't get too comfortable, we're going to be sparring." So his name is Naruto, I can't believe what possessed his parents to name him after a fishcake.

I wanted to get a good vantage point of the Uchiha in action so I picked a good tree and climbed it to get comfortable.

"Right now? Can't we rest a little?"

"We just got here. Come on, get off your ass." The Uchiha nudged Naruto with a toe.

He pulled himself to his feet and then formed a cross with two forefingers from each hand, "Kage Bunshin no jutsu!" Six copies of the orange boy materialized and took fighting stances. "Come on, Sasuke!"(dattebyo!)

They started out with taijutsu. The Uchiha had a good fighting form and good speed, he was took out the first six bunshins with ease, they were just standing around really, not even defending themselves properly. I guess this is just the warm up, Naruto did the kage bunshin again, this time there were ten of them. They were defeated as well, this time they were a little more challenging for the Uchiha. He seemed a little out of breadth already. But they continued, the Uchiha took on the clones while Naruto formed them, sometimes throwing himself into the fight along with his shadow clones. It was a bore to watch but I was rather surprised to see that Naruto didn't even seem exhausted by the despite having made at least fifty of them. What's more, his chakra usage was really sloppy, wasting about the same amount of chakra as what he channeled correctly. I could easily make a few hundred and not feel a huff, but it's pretty rare to encounter anyone who's anywhere near my chakra capacity. This guy is really interesting.

But spectatorship doesn't suit me, I released the hold I had on my chakra signature to alert the boys to my presence. Only the Uchiha seemed to notice and he stopped after he eliminated the Naruto who was half-way through swinging a roundhouse at his head.

"Who's there, show yourself." Compared to the Naruto who was hardly even breathing hard, the Uchiha was exhausted, yet he pulled himself to his full height and tried to hold a stoic air.

I hopped off the tree to land about three feet in front of them. "Nice to meet you, Uchiha Sasuke."

"Who are you, why were you hiding in the trees watching us?"

"I was bored, you could say I was itching for a fight." The Uchiha smirked, as if goading me to challenge him, but he was obviously not worth fighting, at least for now, he probably wasn't in top form since he had to sneak out of the hospital. "Hey, you in orange, want to have a go? This guy-" I stuck a thumb in the jet hair's direction "doesn't give you much of a kick does he?"

SASUKE

I admit I was feeling a little winded after what could be considered as a light warm up in my normal condition. Then I felt someone's presence sharply, it hadn't felt anything earlier so I suppose whoever it is wants to be discovered.

The girl's entrance was pretty smooth, she'd propelled herself from a tree about twenty meters away to land lightly on the balls of her feet almost completely without sound. I was pretty impressed, until she pulled herself to her full height and I saw she wasn't very tall. She was smiling sunnily when she asked Naruto for a fight, the look was really familiar for some reason. It was humiliating that some stranger would witness my fatigue, but she further insulted me when she chose Naruto over myself to have a spar with. This is the first time anyone chose to challenge Naruto over me since everyone knows that I'm the better fighter. She must not be from Konoha.

"You can't just barge in here and ask for a fight, who are you and state your purpose in Konoha."

"Meh, don't feel like telling you snot face. I want to fight the fish cake here, maybe we'll spar when you recover, not now." She was still smiling, outsider or not, the midget was just plain annoying, as if I'll let anyone talk to me like that.

"Alright, then let's go." Naruto was smiling now, so that's why the look seemed so familiar, her smile was almost a perfect replica of Naruto's. For that matter, speaking of similarities, the girl had the same shade of blonde hair as Naruto and also the same eye color, but otherwise, really their facial features and build were rather different. However, somehow. For some reason I felt like they reflected each other, I suppose it's the shared feelings of rivalry?

"Naruto, don't. She might be a spy or something coming here to steal Konoha techniques."

The girl was unaffected by my statement. "If I were a spy, I wouldn't be asking, I would simply attack you and you'd naturally have to defend yourselves. Anyway, I was talking to orange, stay out of this."

"Never mind Sasuke, if she wants a fight she'll get one. If she's a spy then I'll just defeat her and bring her to Tsunade-oba-chan later. Bring it, girlie. Don't interfere, Sasuke."

"That's what I'm talking about, let's go."

She attacked with amazing speed, Naruto never stood a chance, her fist met his face before he even twitched his arms to guard. Naruto flew backwards for about five meters, then recovered quickly from the blow and narrowly dodged the projectiles the girl threw ahead of herself. She caught Naruto while he was in mid air and swung him into the ground with a force that cracked the earth upon impact. Her leg swung down for another blow, narrowly missing Naruto. They faced each other then, Naruto breathing heavily, eyes calculating there was a slight trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Asami stood casually leaning her weight to one side, one hand on her hip, the other extended towards Naruto and crooked a forefinger.

"Come."

Naruto leapt forward, his face cast in a fierce expression, the girl smiling lightly. But the fight in her showed in her eyes. They burned like blue fire fueled by the winds. Naruto was on the offensive now, but his blows were uncoordinated, compared to the blonde girl, he looked clumsy. An amateur up against the pro. The girl moved with a grace of a wild animal, like a cat ambushing its prey. Her attacks were teasing, luring Naruto further into anger and frustration, making him clumsier as his vision clouded no doubt, with rage. Naruto fought viciously, but his arms were always swept to the side, his kicks were stopped before they rose above waist level. She took her time, she still had that relaxed smile on, but her eyes were still hot with emotion. Every time Naruto left himself open, she punished him with a sharp angular blow charged with a large burst of energy, but not enough to knock him off his feet.

The fight continued for a few hours. It was curious, they had increased the speed gradually and Naruto was doing a hell of a job keeping up. I couldn't keep up with their movement using my normal eyes. To be honest I have never seen Naruto move so fast ever, I could only tell when he gets hit from the sound of impact, and the answering wince on his face followed by the strangled curse. The two of them covered the entire space of the training ground. But they edged away from the trees, Naruto had made the mistake of letting himself be cornered against a tree once and suffered for it, she landed a jab at his adam's apple, he had learned not to repeat the same mistake.

All this time, Naruto had hardly gotten in a full blow. Each time he got close to landing one, she would move with the direction of it and the strike only just touches her. Well, I'm surprised Naruto is still standing really, he had tasted at least fifty of those mega-strikes in his upper torso and his body heaved with the effort of breathing. But he still held that stubborn gaze, on the other hand the girl hardly showed the effect the fight had on her, she was breathing steadily, though evidently more rapidly then when she started. However her eyes were narrowed, and her smile had crooked up into a full-blown smirk, she was pleased, somehow.

They've increased the speed again, Naruto is barely keeping up anymore, the end is near. And about time, shit, this girl may be on the tiny side but she was good. She had total control over the fight, she kept her head cool and maintained perfect balanced through out. I've never seen her style of taijutsu before, but something was off, with every time she intercepts Naruto's moves, her style would leave it open for her to be more offensive. It has the potential of being both defensive and offensive at the same time. But why is she not doing that?

At that, I focused my chakra and forced it to my eyes, activating my kekkei genkai. I felt all the muscles from the neck down cramp up simultaneously, the pain almost brought me to my knees. So maybe it wasn't the best idea to push my chakra coils after being in coma for a year, Sakura's going to kill me if she finds out. Well, at least my sharingan is still working, I could see every subtle movement in the fight happening in the clearing. Suddenly I could see that her blocks were rather jerky they were not as smooth as they seemed to be with my normal eyes. She would push Naruto's attack aside and pause a fraction of a second, which she could have used to get in a clear shot at Naruto's body. She was holding back!

ICHIROU

When I woke, there was something warm cuddled up to me, which I assumed was Asami. I tousled her hair and kissed her forehead, it was rare that Asami wakes later than me so I wanted to take a good look at her sleeping face. Was what I thought, until I noticed that Asami was not Asami.

"Eww! Yuck, what the hell, Ichirou! Man!" He was rubbing the spot I had kissed him on. "I don't swing that way! Gross! Leave that shit for your future girlfriend. Eww!" Yeah I get what he means, I've never felt more disgusted in my life, I tried to scrub away the gross feeling of having Nowaki on my lips. I mean I love the guy but I don't swing that way either.

"I thought it was Asami, damn it. What were you doing rubbing your damned face on me anyway? It was your own fault you idiot. When did you awaken your inner girl huh?"

"Yuck, even if I did turn into a girl, I won't be interested in you, I thought it was Asami too ya' know? How'd I know I'd been sleeping next to a damned gorilla? Get off my leg, you're freaking heavy, it's gone numb."

"Alright, alright shut up. It must be Asami pulling a prank on us, where is she?"

"How would I know? Maybe she's in the toilet or something." He rolled to his side and pulled the quilt to cover his shoulder then went back to sleep with a huff. I got off the bed and stretched, feeling a large bruise on my left hip, I didn't remember getting one. It was a fresh one too. Maybe I fell off the bed when I was asleep. I took a good look around the room, Asami's gear was where I'd left it along with the rest of our equipment. I strapped Shizuka to my belt out of habit then set out to look for Asami, Nowaki had already fallen asleep again, so I left the room quietly.

Just outside the room, I bumped into Sakura who was thoroughly pissed off. She looked a completely different person from the quiet and mature girl from yesterday, if not for the pink hair I wouldn't have known it was her. But I felt that that irritable look suited her better than the reserved attitude.

"Sakura-san, is anything the matter?"

"That Naruto, he must have taken Sasuke out of his ward, that baka! Oh, what I will do to him when I get my claws in him, nothing better happen to my Sasuke-kun!" Figures, she was a girl in love, they have a tendency to get really scary when that happens. "How's Asami-san?"

"Well, she's not in the ward, could you tell me where the ladies room is? She might be in there."

"Do you want me to go in and look for her as well? You can't go in right?"

"Erm, weren't you looking for someone? I'd hate to get in your way."

"No, it's along the way anyway. Follow me."

Sakura led me near the back of the hospital and checked the cubicles inside. Asami wasn't there. Her wander-lust had probably acted up again, either that or she was training somewhere. "Sakura-san, is there any place that's scenic or a clearing or something of both around here?"

"There are a few training grounds that were unaffected by the raid if that's what you mean."

"Could you give me a map or something to find them?"

"You can just follow me, my team mates are probably secretly training in one of them right now, I'll take you around if that's what you want."

"Thanks, let me just take something from the room alright?"

I went back in the ward to get my basic first aid pouch. Just in case.

Turns out, my instincts were right, we found Asami crouching over a bloodied body in the fifth training ground we reached. She blushed, with a sheepish smile when she caught my eye. Sakura practically flung herself forward to kneel beside the boy on the floor. There was another guy standing over the unconscious one, both males were around our age. I took a quick assessment of the boy's wounds. There was a lot of blood on the floor but his wounds were already starting to clot. The slash wounds had been perfectly clean, as if slashed by a sharp thin blade. There was hardly any work to do, Sakura had already started healing him.

"Asami, what did you do?"

"Erm.. " She shuffled her feet nervously, it was usually Nowaki in her position while she stood in mine ready for reprimanding. " I woke up, and just felt like stretching my legs, then I saw the name, Uchiha on the hospital door so I figured I'd take a look at the genius kid, but they were sneaking out so I thought I'd just to follow them. Then I saw them sparring and I just felt really restless and err, well the blonde kid, he was pretty good he made over fifty kage bu" She paused squirming slightly as she looked up at me, " Then err, you know, one thing led to another. And here we are." she finished lamely.

To be utterly truthful, I almost couldn't bear to do the scolding when she was so adorable with her guilty eyes and shiftiness. But I'd rather the three of them don't take this matter up to the Hokage. So I got to at least put up a convincing act of giving her a dressing down. Besides, it'll be awhile before I get the chance again.

"But I gave him that potion thing, Ichirou. He'll probably wake up soon anyway." She was sullen in her defense, sneaking a glance behind her at the unconscious boy and Sakura-san. "I only used Kaze Kizu for buffet wind, not cutting wind."

Which explained why the body was still attached together. "Either way, you know we're still under observation from Hokage-sama, why'd you attack like that? Taijutsu should have been enough."

"He said he'll only stop if he's out cold, and that guy, he has some crazy chakra, like me. I'd have to take the whole day for him to tire out with taijutsu, you won't be much happier with broken bones right? 'cause those take longer to heal." This was the exact same argument Nowaki had used with Asami once. Though admittedly, Nowaki usually does worse, using some random shinobi to test his seals on.

"That doesn't justify anything Asami."

There was a pause, "I know."

"Sakura-san, don't worry his wound should heal within the hour-" I was going to explain the use of the potion Asami had given to the unconscious guy- I made it to be a quick-heal potion that closes wounds at a quick rate, and replenishes chakra as a side effect, but his wounds had already healed completely leaving only faint pink marks that disappeared seconds after, leaving no scars. The potion was good, but it shouldn't be healing That quickly.

The guy had come to, "Sakura-chan? Erm, don't kill me, I just wanted to take Sasuke out for some light exercise, you know, the rehabili-whatever thing that Tsunade oba-chan was talking about, those doctors were too soft and slow for Sasuke. He was the one who asked me to help anyway." The word poured out in a frantic scrambling, he seemed to be in panic from seeing Sakura. Said girl only threw herself at the boy and hugged him tightly. Then she looked at Asami with a look of murder in her eyes, she stood up and approached Asami, I felt the need to place myself between the girls.

"Oh it's you! you haven't told me your name yet you know? Hey, how'd you do that move? That was awesome! You have a Wind Affinity too? Can you teach me that wind cutter thing?" The guy really couldn't read the atmosphere, but I guess there's no hard feelings there. Sakura and ebony-haired boy turned to stare at the blonde boy in incredulity. Even Asami had stepped from behind me to look at him in bewilderment. Even I was feeling a little weirded out. Was he really eracting in that manner. I mean being easy-going is one thing, but he's not even taking his wounds into consideration. I mean Nowaki is the most easy-going guy I know, even he won't react like that. Maybe he's a masochist, it can't be that he's one of those guys with a fetish for getting beaten up by girls they are interested in. Now that annoyed me a little.

"You, you're kinda weird huh? I just sliced you up like you're sashimi and you're asking me to teach you? You don't even know me, I could have been out to get your life. Why are you so trusting, can you please have some kind of self awareness? Anyway, how is it that you heal that fast? The potion Ichirou made is good but it should have taken at least an hour for it to fully heal, you hardly took twenty minutes."

"But if you wanted to kill me, you would have earlier right? With your first shot, like you said just now. Anyway, I don't know many people who can do Wind jutsu there's only Asuma-san and me in Konoha. And you're a friend right?"

"Did you hit your head or something? Do you remember I just sliced you, I did right?" She looked up at me in confusion, seeking confirmation so I gave her a nod. "She turned to the dark haired boy who was in the clearing with Asami before we arrived. "You saw me cut him right? Six lines, blood flying?"

The boy glared at Asami with an annoyed look, "Will you stop describing it like that, yeah I saw you wound Naruto and I haven't gotten back at you for that."

"Yeah, that was the reaction you're supposed to have, Naruto."

"Don't call his name like he's so familiar with you!" That guy snarled, he sounded like the blond kid's father. Or mother, if you take a better look at him. Pale skin, big eyes, slim frame, he was only missing out the boobs department. But I suppose there are lots of girl that go for this androgynous-emo type.

"That too." Asami added as she frowned at the blonde's naiveté. Asami isn't exactly the trusting type, it takes a while for her to warm up to people, so I understand that she doesn't really understand the boy's lack in taking any kind of offense. But seriously, this guy is way, way too trusting.

"But we've sparred, and you didn't try to kill me. Besides, I always heal really fast, what you did was no biggie. So we can be friends right?" He looked to Asami with a wide smile. Looking goofy and honest at the same time. Asami still looked a little apprehensive, but she was smiling a little as she shook her head.

"My name's Shieien Asami, you baka. We can't be friends if you don't even know my name. Come on, Ichirou. I can already feel his stupidity infecting me."

Author's Note:

This was easier to complete than any of the other chapters, and it has the most words! 6000++ woot! Oh and I can finally type without looking at the keyboard. Yipee! Yes I know that's sad, and really random but nevertheless, it's better late than never. I'm liking Asami a little more now, though previously I loved writing in Nowaki POV, I still do but I'm enjoying Asami POV as well now. If you noticed I'm she's showing more emotion now not all logical and stiff anymore. Notice all the insinuations? hm? hm? waggles eyebrows whatever you've deduced so far, is probably right haha. I' bringing in more characters in the next chap be ready for a brief time skip. and ciao! Review please. I beg you, It's been so long since anyone said anything. Am I getting boring?


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